V.I. Warshawski

I'm coming at this as a fan of Kathleen Turner, the V.I. Warshawski series and of my home city of Chicago. This movie simply blew it.

The casting, at least, was perfect. Turner is perfectly cast as V.I. The voice, the look, the attitude, everything. She perfectly captures the character. Even the rest of the casting is good. Jay O. Sanders perfectly fits Murray (A red-headed Elliot Gould according the books) and Dennehy is Bobby Mallory.

The problem is script and direction. They took bits and pieces from at least four different books and threw them together, badly. They watered down V.I. (tho Turner did a hell of a job of working through it). The movie loses its way at the end. It's just a mess. The directing was half-hearted. And they never got much of the character of Chicago, which is a major part of V.I. herself.

This could have been a great movie. V.I. is one of the great unsung female characters in mystery fiction. Chicago is one of the great cities of the world. And the stories in the series are full and complex. And this movie wasn't any of it.

It's good for the hardcore Kathleen Turner fans. She is the best part of this movie and manages to get the character to show through the bad dialog. But this movie could have been so much more. Hopefully a good adaption could be done at some point.

V.I. Warshawski is my all-time favorite movie, and I don't know why people keep butchering it so bad. It's an intriguing mystery that pulls you in and doesn't let you go until the end.

Kathleen Turner shines as detective Victoria Warshawksi whom is hired by the 13 year old girl, Kat, she is babysitting to find out who murdered her father. With suspects at every corner, Vic doesn't know who to trust and who not to. Kat joins forces with Vic in a more helpful approach to the situation, getting information that Vic can't obtain herself eliminating suspects and narrowing it down to one. The ending will blow your mind, as it isn't expected.

Filmed on Chicago's waterfront, V.I. Warshawski delivers the goods for intrigue, mystery, and top notch action! If you haven't seen it, give it a chance. It's worth the 1.99 rental price - don't listen to anyone who says this movie unbearable to watch because it's an outstanding film and one of Kathleen Turner's best.

I keep thinking the other people who have commented on this movie saw a different movie than I did. I totally enjoyed it, Kathleen Turner delivers a wisecrack better than anyone and her mocking laugh in the bathtub scene is too much! She shows her vulnerable side yet you know that V.I. can take care of herself when she has to. The foul mouthed little girl made me cringe a little with her first words in the movie. The chemistry between V.I. and the girl works for me. Randy Edleman's music for the movie really delivers as well. My test of a film really centers on the characters. If I like the characters and care about them that's usually enough. This film has a story which is more than I can say for other more popular films. I would give it 4 stars out of 5.

I have just seen Kathleen Turnjer in "V.I. Warshawski" for the third time and, for the third time, am at a total loss to understand the panning/overall rating of 4.3 awarded to it by previous reviewers. I think the movie DOES reflect a lot of the Paretsky original novels and think Turner does a good job in portraying "the dick from the dock" in a manner which combines both respect for the literary character and the kind of gritty, down-to-earth film noir genre which the film obviously pays its debts to. This latter aspect is particularly apparent in the DIALOGUE, much of which my wife and I found hysterical and easily on a par with such remakes of Chandler as the "Farewell, My Lovely" version of the 1970s with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling. Like the letter, "V.I." is not going to be rated as "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep" of the 1990s, but I still think it is a sound, entertaining and engaging piece of work, which does not deserve the reviews mentioned above. Now that we are past the "Blow 'em up / SFX-dominated" fayre of "Die Hard 27"or whatever, is it time for a follow-up to what was, in my view, sadly, Turner's sole donning of the red glitter shoes of V.I. with another actress in the role?

"V.I. Warshawski" (Kathleen Turner) is a private detective who is hired by a former hockey player named "Bernard 'Boom Boom' Grafalk" (Stephen Meadows) to investigate some deals involving his two brothers. When her client is murdered she not only inherits the murder case but temporarily gets Bernard's 13 year-old daughter "Kat" (Angela Goethals) as well. Throw in a shady mob figure by the name of "Smeissen" (Wayne Knight), a fatherly cop "Lt. Mallory" (Charles Durning) and a two-timing newspaper journalist named "Murray" (Jay O. Sanders) and what develops is a good action movie with plenty of humor along the way. Now, while this movie certainly has some faults what I liked best about it was the performance of Kathleen Turner who I thought did quite well in spite of some weak dialogue and a couple of rather obvious and predictable scenes. She also had some great legs. In any case, I enjoyed the movie and I rate it as slightly above average.