There are many enjoyable moments in Inherent Vice’s drug-addled noir, most of them occurring between Joaquin Phoenix’s hippie P.I. and Josh Brolin’s crooked cop. As a whole, though, the stupor the audience is made to share with the protagonist renders the intricacies of the hardboiled plot largely impenetrable. That bewildering effect is fitting but unsatisfying.
Inherent Vice
Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014,