Inherent Vice (2014)

Inherent Vice (2014) — a trippy, shaggy neo-noir comedy-drama set in early 1970s Southern California — follows Larry "Doc" Sportello, a pot‑loving private eye whose easygoing haze is disrupted when his ex, Shasta Fay, turns up asking him to protect her wealthy boyfriend, real‑estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann, from an alleged abduction plot. What begins as a simple favor spirals into a labyrinth of missing people, shady developers, crooked cops, cults, the drug trade and a baffling underworld syndicate known as the Golden Fang. You’ll watch Doc navigate this conspiracy with a ragtag cast — the earnest but unsettling cop Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, slippery lawyer Sauncho Smilax, Deputy D.A. Penny Kimball, and eccentric figures like the supposedly dead saxophonist Coy Harlingen — in a series of odd, comic and sometimes dangerous encounters. The plot deliberately meanders: clues multiply, motives blur, and characters drift in and out of Doc’s orbit, mirroring the unsettled, drug‑fueled mood of the era. Seeing the film is an experience of mood as much as mystery. Expect languid pacing, hallucinatory visuals, sun‑bleached period detail, a jazzy/folk‑tinged soundtrack and a tone that mixes slapstick absurdity with melancholic nostalgia. It’s witty and surreal, dense with atmosphere and quirky dialogue, and often leaves threads dangling rather than tying everything up neatly — delivering a satisfyingly strange ride that feels like chasing clues through a dream about the end of the Sixties.

Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Runtime: 148 min

Genres: Comedy, Crime, Drama

6.0 /10 81 /100 6.6 /10 6.9 /10