'Inherent Vice' misses the yearning and despair inside noirish shenanigans
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most highly gifted directors of his generation and an heir, in terms of his shaggy, free-ranging style and sensibility, to Robert Altman. His new movie, 鈥淚nherent Vice,鈥� adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel, is a kind of companion piece to Altman鈥檚 鈥淭he Long Goodbye,鈥� and it鈥檚 the sort of failure that only a director of his talents could make 鈥� a movie about a stoner private eye (Joaquin Phoenix) in Los Angeles circa 1970 that seems to have been concocted in a stoned haze of its very own.
The Philip Marlowe-ish complications pile up along with the likes of Josh Brolin (very good as a bonkers, buzz-cut cop), Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short and, as a slinky noir vamp, relative newcomer Katherine Waterston (daughter of Sam). What the film misses, which 鈥淭he Long Goodbye鈥� mainlined, is the yearning and despair inside all these noirish shenanigans. Grade: B (Rated R for drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language, and some violence.)
