Vashirdfel
Simply A Masterpiece
Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
SnoopyStyle
Vicky V.I. Warshawski (Kathleen Turner) is a brassy private investigator in Chicago. She meets ex-hockey player Boom-Boom Grafalk at a bar. She is surprised when he brings his daughter Kat (Angela Goethals) to babysit. Next he's killed in a suspicious accident. V.I. promises Kat to solve her father's death. With the help of reporter Murray (Jay O. Sanders), they investigate the death and the sale of the family dockside property and business.I like Kathleen Turner as this character. She fits the character quite well and her relationship with little tough-talking Kat is endearing. It's too bad that this is such a badly made movie. The action is done poorly. Director Jeff Kanew does a poor job overall.
jztzt
V.I. Warshawski is essentially a macho film with the exception of the sex of the lead character. Kathleen Turner portrays the titular character, a tough-talking and independent Chicago private detective. Not only does she solve a case in the film, she gets herself into a lot of violent confrontations as well, from people who constantly want to foil her investigative findings concerning the inheritance of a shipping industry. Incredibly, Turner is able to stand toe-to-toe with her male counterparts. She is impressively gruff, tough, seasoned, and weary.There are good and bad elements in the film. As written, the characters' mannerisms and dialogues are too mannered, cute, and artificial. Everyone seems to be wisecracking, yelling, and acting tough all the time. I know that's a common fixture of characters of the detective genre, but it's just too much and too insincere. Some of the characters are quirky but they aren't three-dimensional. There's no shortage of stock, sleazy, and mean spirited characters. I don't care deeply for the characters. They are merely pawns and not fully fleshed out. The film is heavy on dialogue and plot but it could have benefited from more heartfelt and intimate moments, such as exploring the characters' relationships with one another and exploring the inner depths of characters. We rarely glimpse beneath the characters' tough superficial layer and wisecracks. At times, the dialogue is stilted and awkward. There are a lot of feeble attempts at humor and one liners that are quite crude, lame, and inappropriate. The mystery isn't as intriguing or sophisticated as it should be. It's easy to figure out where the story is going as there aren't much surprises. The villains aren't very threatening either. By the end of the film, I still have questions that are left unanswered. I do however, enjoy Turner's gradual rapport with Kat (the young actress overplays the part though), the daughter of a murdered hockey player and who seems to be the key to solving the mystery.At times, the film does display a quirky sense of humor that works, as evident in certain jokes and sight gags. There are also some interesting and high energy set pieces. However, some of these scenes detract from the main plot and have a juvenile mentality to them.Whereas other films have been successful and intriguing in their takes on the film noir and detective genre (e.g. Night Moves, Chinatown), V.I. Warshawski is not inspired.
skyray
Viewed this movie on 11/20/04, and it was so entertaining that it kept me up until two in the morning. My wife, who has markedly different tastes than I do, liked it enough to stay up with me. Imagine my surprise when I went to Maltin to look up a character, and found it classed as a BOMB. He panned it as wretchedly scripted, directed and photographed. To the contrary, I found the script to be easily followed, something that is getting more and more rare in this age of obscure scripts. If it was poorly directed, the actors are geniuses, becaust the scenes hung together well, were understandable and seemed completely natural, even though the story line was a bit picaresque. The photography was certainly adequate to tell the story without intruding on it.Maltin and I may have seen different movies, because his plot summary spoke of a murdered hockey player, and without betraying too much of the plot, there were plenty of murders but no hockey player in the movie I saw. The plot in the movie I saw was delightfully complex, with a number of twists and turns that would have done O'Henry proud. All in all, it was two hours well spent.
iwatcheverything
I didn't really like this film. Where was all the action? I mean it was supposed to be an action film with a little mystery behind it right? The mystery part was okay but after just a few minutes you knew who the bad guy was. After seeing the man from Sienfeld and 3rd Rock from the sun do some very funny characters, seeing him try to be the hard hitting gangster in this film was hard to believe. He did okay with the role it was just trying to see him as a bad man was not very easy. As for Kathlene Turner, she did the best with the role as she could. She is still a great actress but took on a bad role.This film is way on the bottom of my list. I wish it could have been so much better but OH WELL.
