Director Paul Thomas Anderson has brought us some challenging and
cerebral work in the past, from the unrelenting intensity of THERE WILL
BE BLOOD to the downright headache-inducing THE MASTER. But his latest
offering INHERENT VICE is seen as a bit of a change of pace. The title (imported from Thomas Pynchon’s source novel) is as weighty
as you might expect, but aside from that the focus is on slapstick and
the absurd, mixed in with Pynchon’s lyrical take on the seamier side of
urban society. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Larry “Doc” Sportello, a
detective in 1970s LA who, like Sherlock Holmes, is often loaded on
drugs but who unlike Holmes is about as organized as a cat trapped in a
filing cabinet.
Sportello has his adventures rooted in the works of Raymond Chandler
and, oddly for Anderson, the output of NAKED GUN producers Abrahams and
Zucker – though he also carries on a long line of shambolic snoopers
from movies past, the exploits of which we are about to document. So
take a swig of booze, hunker down in your rusty car and prepare to stake
out THN’s rogues gallery of great but grungy investigators...
