Martin I. Petrov

Child of indie American cinema, Anderson keeps a sweet tone of bewilderment in his new hors d’oeuvre, which although took time to prepare, is served cold, raw - pleasing, but leaving a mouthwatering effect for a no-show main. 

Remembering Anderson’s previous moments with The Master or Magnolia, where a constant flow and amusing disconnection from reality progress with every scene, Inherent Vice is more of a sharp staccato-like nostalgic manifesto for an era of drugs, sex & rock’n’roll. Joaquin Phoenix is  Anderson’s muse for a second time after The Master, now incarnating Doc, a drug addict investigator in 70’s LA who gets back on track searching for missing ex-love Shasta (Katherine Waterston), a happy-go-lucky daddy-chaser whose new prey Mickey (Eric Roberts) is believed to be dead. With the mystery veil trapping in Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) as the ball-smacking police officer who antagonises Doc’s hippie ass-licking, Penny (Reese Witherspoon) - Doc’s amour-de-jour who plays it hard as a valuable informer and Coy (Owen Wilson) as a key figure, hostage of a massive drug trafficking, the picture fills with the parade of hip underground California and the posh creme-de-la-creme as two poles of a delusional world. 

Phoenix appears like a macho, self-indulgent hippie who lingers between LA’s 70s subculture and the hitting bohemian bourgeois with a somewhat aggressive primitivism, challenging and yet quite convincing. In the very few scenes with Reese Witherspoon one can sense their good chemistry, long known since Walk the line and its a pity we don’t get more of it. Josh Brolin delivers the most joyful performance distributing the most hilarious ice-lolly biting in history, that even a gay man would envy. 

The Andersonian cinematography of facial close-ups, moving stillness and par aestheticism is surprisingly mixed with some Tarantinean roughness and undisclosed madness that make Inherent Vice broader, breaking its mysterious monotonousness. Everyone remembers the pleasure in Uma Thurman’s face when placing teeth in that hamburger in 94’s Pulp Fiction , now inscribed on Josh Brolin’s expression, while enjoying his lolly stick as a cool LAPD chief. 

Even when Doc goes to meet Chlorinda (Jillian Bell), Coy’s junkie wife whose aspiration is to teach children reasonable drug-taking (!) or Japonica, a spoiled daddy-girl who escaped rehab to get back in business, Paul Thomas Anderson shows to be more playful with his characters than ever before, giving them unlimited power to suck life with a straw only as QT’s so perfectly mastered - see Uma Thurman and David Carradine, Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta etc. 

Inherent vice is beautifully constructed piece of cinematography, but it lacks in keeping the attention at its highest, especially after getting into the third hour, where hardly something tells that the end is close. Paul Thomas Anderson remains a captivating master of the camera as long as he keeps away from gangsterish book adaptations that aspire to project the American lifestyle from then to now.