The Warriors

US (1979): Action
90 min, Rated R, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Walter Hill's spectacle takes its story from Xenophon's Anabasis and its style from the taste of the modern urban dispossessed--in neon signs, graffiti, and the thrill of gaudiness. The film enters into the spirit of urban-male tribalism and the feelings of kids who believe that they own the streets because they keep other kids out of them. In this vision, cops and kids are all there is, and the worst crime is to be chicken. It has--in visual terms--the kind of impact that "Rock Around the Clock" had when it was played behind the titles of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. It's like visual rock, and it's bursting with energy. The action runs from night until dawn, and most of it is in crisp, bright Day-Glo colors against the terrifying New York blackness; the figures stand out like a jukebox in a dark bar. There's a night-blooming, psychedelic shine to the whole baroque movie. Adapted from the Sol Yurick novel. With Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, David Patrick Kelly, David Harris, Dorsey Wright, James Remar, Thomas Waites, Roger Hill, and Marcelino Sanchez. Cinematography by Andrew Laszlo; art direction by Don Swanagan and Bob Wightman. Paramount.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book When the Lights Go Down.

WarGames

US (1983): Thriller/Drama
110 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

The people who made it had half an idea. The film begins as a comedy about a teenage boy in Seattle who is caught up in the fascination of computers and video games; he has all this miracle-working technology and not a thought in the world about what to do with it. Matthew Broderick plays the role with great charm; the boy is like an American Antoine Doinel, and he's the life of the movie. But when this boy accidentally plugs into the Defense Department's war-games system and gets into what he thinks is just another video game--Global Thermonuclear War--the machines take over, especially a huge box of flashing light that sounds like an 18-wheel truck rumbling down the highway. There's also the noise of speechmakers--the director, John Badham, loses his easy touch, and the picture goes flooey. It's at its worst when John Wood is onscreen as a saintly computer scientist who's so brainy and bitter that he rolls his eyes from side to side and wears his hair in bangs. With Ally Sheedy, who has some nifty lines in the first part, and Dabney Coleman, Barry Corbin, and Eddie Deezen as Mr. Potato Head. From a script by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. MGM/United Artists.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Taking It All In.

Wanda

US (1971): Crime
105 min, Rated PG, Color

Barbara Loden wrote, directed, and stars in this story of the minimal love affair of a passive, bedraggled girl from a mining town and a nervous wreck of a small-time crook (Michael Higgins). The director never falls back on coy tricks or clichés and the performances are admirable, but the movie is such an extremely drab and limited piece of realism that it makes Zola seem like musical comedy. Shot in 16 mm, in color.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Deeper into Movies.

The Walls of Malapaga

France-Italy (1949): War/Romance/Drama
91 min, No rating, Black & White
Also known as AU-DELÀ DES GRILLES/LE MURE DI MALAPURGA.

Jean Gabin and Isa Miranda are the restless, lonely lovers in this Franco-Italian production, directed by René Clément. Gabin plays a Frenchman, wanted for homicide, who has fled to Genoa; there he spends a few days with the troubled Miranda and her impressionable daughter (Vera Talchi) before the police close in on him. Though the film won international recognition (the Best Director and Best Actress Awards at Cannes, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), it's a rather uneasy mixture of the romantic, melodramatic prewar French style and the harsh, poetic postwar Italian style (especially in the semi-documentary use of the Genoa-waterfront locations and in the attempt at a fresh approach to character). There was gossip that the French team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, who had worked on some of Gabin's fatalistic, atmospheric prewar successes, rewrote Cesare Zavattini's and Suso Cecchi d'Amico's neo-realist script. Whatever the reasons, Clément seems to be pulled in different directions; his "sensitivity" is like a glue holding the picture together. Music by Roman Vlad. In French and Italian.

Walking Tall

US (1973): Crime/Biography
125 min, Rated R, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

The implied system of values in the early, heroic Westerns and action-adventure films began to be treated satirically in the "counterculture" movies of the Vietnam and Watergate years. But there were also some hugely popular 70s films, such as this one and DIRTY HARRY, in which the old values returned in a corrupt, vigilante form under the banner of "law and order." This rabble-rousing movie appeals to a deep-seated belief in simple, swift, Biblical justice; the visceral impact of the film makes one know how crowds must feel when they're being swayed by demagogues. It was sold as the true story of crusading Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, who cleaned out the moonshining, gambling, and prostitution in his county. But it's a tall tale: a fiction derived from early Westerns. The director, Phil Karlson, is brutally effective; he makes the battle of virtuous force against organized evil seem primordial. Karlson pulls out all the stops of classical cheapie melodrama, right down to the murder of the Pusser family dog and the weeping face of a bereaved child. The picture's crudeness and its crummy cinematography give it the illusion of honesty. With Joe Don Baker, who gives a powerful performance as Pusser, the gifted Elizabeth Hartman as Mrs. Pusser, and Rosemary Murphy, Gene Evans, Brenda Benet, Felton Perry, Kenneth Tobey, Lurene Tuttle, Ed Call, and Noah Beery, who acts Hollywood-cornpone-Southern. Shot in Tennessee; written by Mort Briskin. It spawned sequels and imitations. Released by Cinerama.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Reeling.

A Walk with Love and Death

US (1969): Romance/Historical
90 min, Rated PG, Color

An unusual and relatively little known fable of love in a time of destruction, directed by John Huston. A student (Assaf Dayan) and a young girl of noble birth (Anjelica Huston) try to find an escape hatch from the Hundred Years' War. This romantic idyll is unusually tough-minded, and effective because it is. The movie lacks urgency, but it's compelling, nevertheless. It has at least one superb image--a great, clumping white horse, a dream horse--and when this fairy-tale beast is slaughtered war becomes truly obscene. With Michael Gough, John Hallam, and Robert Lang. The rather literary screenplay is by Dale Wasserman, from a novel by Hans Koningsberger; music by Georges Delerue; costumes by Leonor Fini.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Deeper into Movies.

A Walk in the Sun

US (1945): War
117 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

This account of an American infantry platoon in Italy has a great big inexplicable reputation. Maybe people were impressed by its serious and poetic intentions, evidenced by the film's having no one higher in rank than the sergeants who take over when their lieutenant is killed, and by the stylized recurrence of such lines as "There's no sense in it--no sense at all" and "That's the way it is--sure as little apples, that's it." The director, Lewis Milestone, brought the film a visual style, and Robert Rossen's script (from the Harry Brown novel) emphasizes that these civilians turned soldiers are just stumbling about, wondering what's going on. But this is the kind of literate movie that is more impressive than enjoyable. With Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges, John Ireland, Huntz Hall, Herbert Rudley as the psycho, and blond, cracked-voice Sterling Holloway, who gets a death scene. The ballad on the sound track, which adds to the air of fanciness, is by Millard Lampell and Earl Robinson. 20th Century-Fox.