Former flame Shasta Ray Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) piques the interest of the sleepy-eyed sleuth with a dramatic story about her lover’s wife’s supposed plan to fleece her property developer hubby by relocating him to a mental institution.
This is actually where the story starts (Doc horizontal on a couch) and in the great noir tradition it all begins with a girl. Inherent Vice is messy and unevenly structured, or, if it hits your palate, beautifully offbeat: bent like a stoner’s dream, as if the entire film exists in the moment a day tripper rouses from slumber. Many of them are, in varying degrees of complexity and relevance, related to a conspiracy involving a billionaire real estate magnate and an outfit called The Golden Fang, which may or may not be simply a consortium of dentists. A private investigator named Larry aka “Doc” (Joaquin Phoenix) is the ganga-sucking force right at the centre of it, the ‘knew I should have slept in today’ antihero who tries to make sense of a confusing mess of signals. Or they straight talk with demands and threats, as if forever entitled to some ill begotten truth. The characters generally speak in hushed tones, like they know something and are afraid of getting caught.