The Wanderers

Skip the prestige-TV noise — The Wanderers, in the US on Kino Film Collection and Kanopy, is quietly one of the better ones. The length is exactly right for the story it is telling — nothing rushed, nothing dragged out. 230 people have weighed in on TMDB, and the verdict leans heavily positive. Ken Wahl's performance alone is worth the time investment. There is no real reason to keep putting it off — it is right there on Kino Film Collection.

There is a reason The Wanderers keeps coming up in conversation. The Wanderers trusts its audience to sit with discomfort instead of resolving it too quickly. 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.’ The performances from Ken Wahl and John Friedrich give it more weight than the premise alone would suggest. It hit screens in 1979. What elevates The Wanderers is a refusal to let any character off the hook too easily. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

For anyone looking for storytelling that takes its characters seriously, The Wanderers delivers. It stands on its own even without an obvious comparison point. A contained runtime means every scene is doing real work. Ken Wahl carries the material with a performance that rewards close attention. Worth starting sooner rather than later.

The Wanderers was released in 1979, directed by Philip Kaufman. The full 117-minute film is available to watch now. Find exactly where it's streaming below, and TV Butler Pro makes it effortless to track your progress as you go. Just search the name, and Butler finds it instantly, tells you which service has it, and remembers exactly where you left off.