Synopsis
The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
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Cast
- Ken WahlRichie
- John FriedrichJoey
- Karen AllenNina
- Toni KalemDespie Galasso
- Alan RosenbergTurkey
- Jim YoungsBuddy
- Tony GaniosPerry
- Linda ManzPeewee
- William AndrewsEmilio
- Erland van LidthTerror
Recommendations
- 80
Time Out
The film survives cuts to deliver some great, gross, comic book capers. And rock history gets its most intelligent illustration since Mean Streets. - 80
TV Guide Magazine
All in all a fascinating film with an outstanding musical score consisting of jukebox hits from the period. - 75
San Francisco Chronicle
The Wanderer can turn an anxious tone to creepy and phantasmagoric. Kaufman's brilliant camera work relies on the exaggerated style of comic books, and the visual energy throughout is gritty. - 75
San Francisco Examiner
This is a giddy parody of gang pictures, West Side Story without the music and set in the Bronx of the '60s. The music is solid early '60s rock 'n' roll ( My Boyfriend's Back, The Wanderer ) and the acting is broad and often silly. - 70
The New Yorker
What revs up the movie and keeps it humming is the driving energy of early rock, with its innocent/rebellious spirit, and its theme that teens must find their own ways to love and fight. - 70
Variety
Despite an uneasy blend of nostalgia and violence, The Wanderers is a well-made and impressive film. Philip Kaufman, who also co-scripted with his wife, Rose [from the novel by Richard Price], has accurately captured the urban angst of growing up in the 1960s. - 60
Empire
Worth a look, if only for the surreal groupings of the gangs (The Wongs, the Del Bombers and the Fordham Baldies...that's right, they're bald). - 50
New York Magazine (Vulture)
Apart from Wahl, the acting in the Wanderers is either embarrassingly flat or hysterically emotional, and the movie is an exhausting mishmash of styles. [23 July 1979, p.62]
