It is my personal opinion that this film would have rated a lot higher if the main character had been a man and not a woman. V.I. Warshawski is a private eye in Chicago who is left with a thirteen year old girl who is the inheritor of a potentially vast estate with the murder of her father. Investigating why the father was killed leads to several interesting discoveries. One of the uncles is trying to kill the girl to get the estate. The mother of the girl, after shooting her husband, the uncle, turns out to be just as greedy and she is willing to kill her own daughter to get the loot. V.I. ends up having to kill the mother to save the daughter. Boy can the P.I. take a punch from Wayne Knight. Knight is some kind of union scum but V.I. gets even for the beating. I enjoyed this movie and found it to be pretty good entertainment.

It is remarkable to me how much affection and revulsion this watchable, incomplete misfire of a film can inspire, here among the Comments and elsewhere; I haven't seen more than a few minutes of it for several years, but did see it in a theater in its original run. Kathleen Turner as VIW is too much a flirt to conform to Sara Paretsky's portrait of her detective, but otherwise gives a decent performance that, better than the script, gets across Warshawski's toughness, wit and unwillingness to suffer fools any more than she has to. The film, as someone else noted, would've done well to be a more faithful adaptation of one of the early novels, rather than pulling bits from several and then letting the plot go completely slack by the last third. But there are nice touches, here and there; Wayne Knight was born to play the petty thug and childhood schoolmate of Warshawski. But the hastiness and corner-cutting of the production is unfortunately evident. One wonders if a second film, with a better script and crew, might've been quite good.

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.

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.