Undoubtedly a staple of Broadway theater, West Side Story has earned its reputation for challenging social commentary and entertaining songs. Even theater patrons have to admit that it’s take on gang life is a little bit colorful—and perhaps even laughable—when compared to the reality. There’s certainly plenty of grit in the story, or at least by the standards of the time it was written in, and there is murder, which is portrayed as grim and meaningless. Anyone with West Side Story tickets these days has to watch the show with a bit of a smirk at times. It’s like comparing the reality of Cops to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video.



West Side Story’s 1961 film adaptation shared the Broadway play’s sensibility. But there have been several other movies since then that have taken an overly theatrical or even glorified view of gang life in New York. Here’s just a few of them.

The Warriors, 1979

Directed by Walter Hill, who would go on to produce some of the most thrilling, gritty action films of the ‘80s, The Warriors’ opening scene sets the bar for theatrical gang life pretty high. At a conference of New York’s gangs (held in a graveyard), the leader of one of the strongest gangs urges a united front that would allow all of them to rule the city. In the crowd there are The Warriors, a group of Coney Island-based kids with leather sleeveless jackets, feathers and beads; the Hi-Hats, a group of mimes; and the Baseball Furies, a gang that wears face paint and baseball outfits. With other colorful, bizarre gangs fleshing out the story, and what appears to be the absence of any rule of law throughout the film, it’s a pretty unrealistic, almost surreal but entertaining perspective of gang life in New York in the ‘70s.

The Wanderers, 1979

Coming out the same year as The Warriors, but with a much smaller cult following, The Wanderers looks at gang life in a glamorized ‘60s. Like The Warriors, the film seems to relish showing off the bizarre cliques that tended to divide along racial lines. Loosely based on real gangs that ran in the neighborhoods throughout the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, there’s the Irish Ducky Boys, the Italian Wanderers, the African-American Del Bombers, and the Chinese Wongs (the last group being described as “twenty-seven guys all named Wong”).

Rumble Fish, 1983

Francis Ford Coppola’s arty gang flick takes a pinch of the nostalgia for the early ‘60s that The Wanderers thrived on and adds an oddly experimental slant to the picture. The jarring camera angles and swooping shots, along with the picture being shot in monochrome, with a few choice objects in certain scenes being in color, have made this a favorite of film buffs. Even though the hoods in this film sigh over days past, when the gangs ran the streets, it’s kind of hard to believe any actual New York gang would appreciate Coppola’s art-film view of street life.

Gangs of New York, 2002

Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York only seems to get better with time, but that’s largely because the epic story of American street life has so much detail and substance to it. Reaching back to the 1860s, Scorsese has created a brilliant panorama of the races, creeds and colors that fuel the American dream—and always have. The gangs in this picture are divided along the lines of territory and race as well as ideology, pitting the Dead Rabbits—and Irish gang—against the Native Americans, a group of Protestant xenophobes led by the aptly named Bill the Butcher. Based upon the historical book of the same name, this is the most well-researched and historically accurate of the films on this list, though there are certainly enough Hollywood flourishes to keep things interesting.

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