Inherent Vice (film)

Plot

In 1970, Shasta Fay Hepworth visits the beach house of her ex-boyfriend, Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private investigator and hippie in Gordita Beach, Los Angeles County. She tells him about her new lover, Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann, a wealthy real estate developer, and asks him to help prevent Mickey's wife and her lover from abducting Mickey and committing him to an insane asylum.

Doc meets with Tariq Khalil, a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, who hires him to find Glen Charlock, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood he met in jail, who owes him money and is one of Wolfmann's bodyguards. He visits Mickey's Channel View Estates project, entering the only business in the developing strip mall, a massage parlor, where he meets an employee, Jade. He searches the premises for Charlock, but is hit with a baseball bat and collapses. Doc wakes outside, lying next to Charlock's dead body and surrounded by policemen. Interrogated by LAPD detective Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, he learns that Wolfmann has disappeared. His attorney, Sauncho Smilax, arranges for his release by the LAPD.

Doc is hired by former heroin addict Hope Harlingen, who is looking for her missing husband, Coy. Although told that Coy is dead, she believes he is alive due to a large deposit to her bank account. Jade leaves Doc a message apologizing for setting him up with the police and telling him to "beware the Golden Fang." He meets her in an alley, where she explains the Golden Fang is an international drug smuggling operation. Jade introduces Doc to Coy, who tells him he is hiding at a house in Topanga Canyon. In a later meeting, he explains he is a police informant and fears for his life, wanting only to return to his wife and daughter. Doc talks to Sauncho, who tells him about the suspicious boat, the Golden Fang; the last time it sailed, Shasta was on board. Thanks to a postcard from her, Doc finds a large building shaped like a golden fang and meets dentist Rudy Blatnoyd.

Bigfoot calls Doc and tells him that Blatnoyd has just been found dead with fang bites in his neck. Bigfoot decides to help Doc find Coy and tells him to search for Puck Beaverton in Chryskylodon, an asylum run by a cult connected to the Golden Fang. There, Doc finds Mickey, who is being watched by the FBI. Mickey tells him he felt guilty for the negativity his real-estate business caused and wants to give his money away, appearing to be a happy member of the cult. Doc also glimpses Puck and Coy. When Doc returns home to his beach house, he is greeted by Shasta, who has returned and is indifferent to the trouble her disappearance has caused. She tells him Mickey is back with his wife. Shasta confesses to having been on the Golden Fang with Mickey on a "three-hour tour" and says she was brought along to be used sexually by all of Mickey's friends. She brags about what she did on the boat to provoke Doc into sex, then tells him they still aren't back together.

Penny, an assistant district attorney with whom Doc is having a fling, gives him confidential files from which he learns that the LAPD pays the loan shark Adrian Prussia to kill people and that one of his victims was Bigfoot's former partner. Prussia is tied to the Golden Fang, and Doc learns that Charlock was involved with a deal, which is why he was killed. Doc visits Adrian, noticing his obsession with baseball bats, but is abducted and drugged by his partner, Puck. He manages to escape, killing both Puck and Adrian. Bigfoot appears and rescues him, driving him home, but Doc discovers he has been set up: Bigfoot has planted heroin in his car (stolen from the Golden Fang as revenge for murdering his partner). Doc arranges for the drugs to be returned to the Golden Fang in exchange for Coy's freedom. Doc and Shasta drive off together, and he tells her this doesn't mean they are back together.


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