INHERENT VICE : Tuesday 17th March 2015.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a Director, Writer and Producer who has given us over more recent years a varied back catalogue of films including 'Boogie Nights', 'Magnolia', 'Punch Drunk Love', 'There Will Be Blood' and now his latest offering 'INHERENT VICE', which I saw earlier this week. Based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon from which Anderson wrote the screenplay, he spent US$20M bringing it to the big screen with a solid cast involving some of Hollywood's finest acting talent. This film picked up two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe nomination and all up 20 award wins and another 51 nominations. Does this make it a great film . . . well no, and I came away a little bewildered by the 'Inherent Vice' experience, and, now sit on the fence over this one!

The film is set in 1970 around the beach town of Gordita Beach in LA County, and the opening shot is between two beach houses looking out at the breaking waves on the shoreline from the street. We are introduced to Larry 'Doc' Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) waking on the sofa from a stoner sleep who is a by-product of the peace lovin' 60's who seems to spend his life smoking on a joint and in a dope fuelled haze. Into his apartment saunters Shasta (Katherine Waterston) an ex-girlfriend who has now moved on and is seeking Doc's help out with her current boyfriend - sleazy but successful real estate developer Michael Z. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), whose wife is trying to have 'The Wolfmann' committed to an asylum.

Doc is a private investigator and so he agrees to take the case to help out Shasta. At his 'office' the next day he meets with a member of the 'Black Guerrilla Family'  - Tariq Kahlil and is hired to find a member of the Ayran Brotherhood,  Glen Charlock, who Kahlil got know in jail, and who now owes him money and just happens to be a bodyguard of 'The Wolfmann'. When Doc investigates one of Wolfmann's property developments on the outskirts of town looking for Charlock he visits the only property on that development - a brothel, and after meeting 'employee' Jade is promptly knocked unconscious with a baseball bat from behind. He comes round in the yard out the front under the baking sun and next to the corpse of Charlock, surrounded by Police looking down at him. Brought in for questioning by Detective Christian F. 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) Doc gets roughed up and threatened before released with no charge when his lawyer arrives on the scene, Sauncho Smilax (Benicio Del Toro).

Next up Doc is approached with a third case by Hope Harlingen (Jen Malone)  to locate her missing, believed dead husband Coy (Owen Wilson). The two come face to face and Coy is clearly not dead, but he is a police informant who fears for his safety and just wants to go home. Back at his office he meets up with Jade from the brothel who apologises for giving him up to the police and warns him about 'The Golden Fang'. Jade tells him that The Golden Fang is a drug smuggling ring, but lawyer Smilax tells him about a suspicious boat called 'The Golden Fang' that somehow Shasta is connected to. Finding a building that looks like a golden fang Doc visits an obscure dentist, Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd (Martin Short) who has a fetish for young girls, new drugs and a whacky lifestyle . . . but quickly winds up dead - with fang like bites to his neck!

Doc eventually comes across Mickey in the insane asylum that has a connection with The Golden Fang where Mickey confesses about being upset about all the negativity he was getting about his real estate business. To make amends Mickeys wants to give away all his money. Penny Kimball (Reece Witherspoon) is the Assistant District Attorney and gives Doc a confidential file on a police funded killer who knocked off Bigfoot's former partner. The killer had links to The Golden Fang and Charlock was involved somewhere along the way too.

As all this plays out it gets worse for Doc before it gets better needless to say. He continues to suck on marijuana joints at every opportunity and is rarely seen on screen without chewing on a spliff! He has a few run-ins with Bigfoot, straddles about in his usual drug induced stupor, at times he can seemingly hardly string a sentence together, and clings on to the last vestiges of the 60's looking up at the rock face of the looming 70's. There a couple of moments of comic laughter as the plot twists and turns and you wonder if Doc knows what the hell is going on, the performances are solid and Brolin is probably the stand-out playing a hard-nosed mean S-O-B Private Dick at work whilst being a down-trodden under the thumb husband at home, and I got the feeling that Phoenix was just playing Phoenix with a huge serve of mutton chops!

This film has a QT's 'Jackie Brown' vibe about it almost and it all comes together in the end but not before it twists and turns all over the place, and wraps you up in knots with interwoven stories, characters of varying questionable backgrounds and the spaced out psychedelic angst of a new dawning decade. This film was frustrating for me, probably 20 minutes to long and at times I felt it plodded along and lost its way. That said, this is very different film offering that we don't see much of anymore and if you can sit through the stoned out dazed antics, ramblings, stumblings and confusion of its unlikely hero then this might be for you!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-