Inherent Vice is a giddy adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s detective novel. It’s 1970, and sometime detective Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is nudged out of a dope fog by an ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston) trying to keep a real-estate mogul boyfriend out of trouble. That’s just the start of a long and twisted road for Doc, who fumbles further and further onwards, uncovering an elaborate (and frankly insane) conspiracy.
Alternately befuddled and bemused – until it’s time for Doc to choose sides, anyway – Phoenix makes an excellent tour guide to the Pynchon/Anderson funhouse, though Josh Brolin very nearly walks away with the picture as the deeply contradictory LAPD detective men call Bigfoot. Waterston’s eerie calm as the melancholy Shasta lingers in the memory, too. And Anderson’s casual mastery of image and sound is here to be admired, as always; he’s made a fantastically dense movie worthy of multiple viewings.
– Norm Wilner, NOW Toronto
