V I Warshawski * (1991, Kathleen Turner, Jay O Sanders, Charles Durning) – Classic Movie Review 12,068

Director Jeff Kanew’s flop 1991 American action-comedy crime film V I Warshawski stars Kathleen Turner, who is promisingly cast as novelist Sara Paretsky’s hardboiled feminist Chicago private eye Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski. But thereafter everything goes wrong for this addled thriller.

The film’s plot is very different from the book but they have kept some of the bare bones of Paretsky’s plot (from her novel Deadlock) in which V I investigates the death of an ex-ice hockey champion named Boom-Boom Grafalk (Stephen Meadows).

But, short as it is at 89 minutes, there is not enough yarn here to fill a TV movie pilot, which this film resembles with its mix of cosiness (V I becomes sickeningly a surrogate mum to the dead man’s precocious 13-year-old daughter Kat), synthetic violence (V I gets roughed up then is perfectly unmarked the next morning), sub-James Bond-style chases and cheap rock music.

Also in the cast are Jay O Sanders, Charles Durning, Angela Goethals, Nancy Paul, Frederick Coffin, Charles McCaughan, Stephen Meadows, Wayne Knight, Lynnie Godfrey, Anne Pitoniak, Stephen Root, Robert Clotworthy, Tom Allard, Michael G Hagerty, Lee Arenberg, Mike Bacarella, John Beasley, Everett Smith, and Herb Muller.

Edward Taylor, David Aaron Cohen and Nick Thiel adapt Sara Paretsky’s novel Deadlock, infuriating her by changing the plot and turning her serious mystery into a near comedy.

It cost $24 million and flopped, taking $11,128,309 in the US.

It was shot from November 1990 to 27 February 1991. Scenes were filmed at Wrigley Field, Chicago; Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, Chicago; San Pedro, California, Long Beach, California; Fire Station 23, Los Angeles, and Warner Bros studios.

the cast are Kathleen Turner as V I Warshawski, Jay O. Sanders as Murray Ryerson, Charles Durning as Lieutenant Bobby Mallory, Lynnie Godfrey as Sal, Anne Pitoniak as Lotty, Geof Prysirr as Ron Whartley, Robert Clotworthy as Philip Pugh, Angela Goethals as Kat Grafalk, Nancy Paul as Paige Wilson-Grafalk, Stephen Meadows as Boom-Boom Grafalk, Frederick Coffin as Horton Grafalk, Charles McCaughan as Trumble Grafalk, John Fujioka as Sumitora, John Beasley as Ernie, Stephen Root as Mickey, Wayne Knight as Bonehead Smeissen, Lee Arenberg as Flesh, Mike Hagerty as Babe, Tom Allard as Big Eddie, Herb Muller as Contreras, Everett Smith as McGraw, and Gene Hartline as Thug.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,068

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