What a trippy, odd, unforgettable blast. Inherent Vice will take you to a world of such a serious world of crime, poverty, druggies, and coked-out dentists that's it's such a blast when you realize the whole thing is played for comedy.
The players are more then willing to work the joke. What's most fascinating is how when you first meet or hear about each of the characters, the actor plays the role to such a versatility no one ends up as expected. Joaquin Phoenix's character Doc at first sounds like such a dead-end, hopeless guy, but there's such an underplayed charisma to Phoenix's performance you end up entranced by the charmer.
Doc's trip into mayhem is all for his ex-girlfriend Shasta, he's helping finding her current boyfriend whose disappeared, while her boyfriend's wife, and her boyfriend were planning on committing him to the nut house for money. Shasta is such a fascinating character as well. At first when we see her, she seems to be the average damsel in distress, but there's such a mystery and allure that Katherine Waterston brings to the character, you see why Doc would risk his life for this beauty. You wish she was on screen more, and it's a shame that her best, most revealing, most personal scene is one that will never be shown on commericals.
Doc's main ally in this quest is Bigfoot, played by Josh Brolin who almost walks away with the movie. He's such an enigma of a a character they could have made a spin-off of this movie based off his characteristics alone. Brolin is stellar and it's a travesty that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar.
One of the biggest complaints I've read about this movie is that there's too much going on, there's a scene late in the movie where Doc sits there just trying to piece together how everyone and everything is related, and it's easy for the viewer to feel like they're in a similar boat. By this point I realized you're not supposed to really have a "point A to point B" type of mindset and just go along for the ride. If you want to look at this as a straight-forward crime/drama about a man discovering the truth, go ahead. If you want to look at this as a man's vivid and wildly inventive hallucination used to get over an ex-girlfriend, go ahead. If you want to look at this as a love story about a man who will do anything to retrieve his unattainable, unrestriced ex, then go ahead. Inherent Vice makes a solid case for all of the above, proving that sometimes in life the end isn't so much as important as the journey you take to get there.
4/4
