Inherent Vice

Joaquin Phoenix, who played a manipulated innocent in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, is nominally in control in the acclaimed auteur's follow-up. A gloriously rambling, dope-fogged detective yarn set in 1970, this will delight aficionados of both the "New Hollywood" era and of author Thomas Pynchon, whose dense novels have been deemed unfilmable. Playing Los Angeles PI "Doc" Sportello as a fuzz-faced countercultural update of Elliott Gould's private dick in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (whose milky look and period grain have been lovingly re-created by cinematographer Robert Elswit), Phoenix takes on two missing person cases: his hippy-chick ex (a lift-off performance from little-known London-born Katherine Waterston) and Owen Wilson's heroin-addict sax player. A labyrinthine investigation ensues via long, talky exchanges with cameoing stars including Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short and Michael K Williams, with Josh Brolin's flat-topped, straight-edge cop a constant ally-cum-nemesis. Taking in Black power, Aryan supremacism, drug smuggling and real estate, Inherent Vice does get over-entangled, but, despite the pot haze, a credible plot emerges and Anderson chalks up another triumph.