VI Warshawski (film)

Plot

Victoria "V.I" Warshawski is a Chicago-based freelance private investigator who lives the part of the hard-boiled detective. But in her heart of hearts, she is a softy. One night, while she is drinking at her favorite bar, she meets an ex-Blackhawks hockey player named Boom-Boom Grafalk (Stephen Meadows). The two connect and a romance appears to be in the making. But Warshawski is nevertheless surprised when Boom-Boom appears at her doorstep later that night with his 13-year-old daughter, Kat (Angela Goethals) in tow.

He asks Warshawski if she could watch her and Warshawski agrees. Later that night, Boom-Boom is killed in a boat explosion and Kat hires Warshawski to track down her father's killer. In doing so she befriends the victim's daughter; together they set out to crack the case.

Critical reception

Janet Maslin of The New York Times had mixed thoughts about the film but commended the acting:

Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and also praised Turner's performance:

Turner's performance as the title character was the one detail Sara Paretsky, who had created the character and written the film's source novel, Deadlock, found fit to praise, criticizing most of the other elements.

Box office

The movie debuted poorly at the box office.

Popular culture

Ian Frazier's book Travels in Siberia recounts an instance where Frazier, visiting the city of Irkutsk in the early 1990s, sees a young girl dancing alone to Randy Edelman's theme song played during the closing credits of the film. At the time, and again in his later reflections upon Russia, Frazier sees this episode as emblematic not only of the sensuality of Russian culture ("Russians can really dance") but of the spirit of the entire nation.

Relation with the original book

The film's plot is very different from that of the original Sara Paretsky novel Deadlock. In the book the ex-Blakhawks player Boom-Boom was the protagonist detective's cousin and lifelong companion, rather than a chance-met stranger; he had no daughter; and "Grafalk" was the family name of another character altogether, a devious shipping magnate who had a major role in the book but was dropped from the film.