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A Scanner Darkly [2006]
from Warner Home Video
starring Rory Cochrane, Robert Downey Jr., Mitch Baker, Keanu Reeves, Sean Allen (II)
directed by Richard Linklater

Features:

• PAL
• Widescreen

Editorial Review:

How well you respond to Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly depends on how much you know about the life and work of celebrated science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. While it qualifies as a faithful adaptation of Dick's semiautobiographical 1977 novel about the perils of drug abuse, Big Brother-like surveillance and rampant paranoia in a very near future ("seven years from now"), this is still very much a Linklater film, and those two qualities don't always connect effectively.

The creepy potency of Dick's premise remains: The drug war's been lost, citizens are kept under rigid surveillance by holographic scanning recorders, and a schizoid addict named Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is facing an identity crisis he's not even aware of: Due to his voluminous intake of the highly addictive psychotropic drug Substance D, Arctor's brain has been split in two, each hemisphere functioning separately. So he doesn't know that he's also Agent Fred, an undercover agent assigned to infiltrate Arctor's circle of friends (played by Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, and Robert Downey, Jr.) to track down the secret source of Substance D. As he wears a "scramble suit" that constantly shifts identities and renders Agent Fred/Arctor into "the ultimate everyman," Dick's drug-addled antihero must come to grips with a society where, as the movie's tag-line makes clear, "everything is not going to be OK."

While it's virtually guaranteed to achieve some kind of cult status, A Scanner Darkly lacks the paranoid intensity of Dick's novel, and Linklater's established penchant for loose and loopy dialogue doesn't always work here, with an emphasis on drug-culture humor instead of the panicked anxiety that Dick's novel conveys. As for the use of "interpolated rotoscoping"--the technique used to apply shifting, highly stylized animation over conventional live-action footage--it's purely a matter of personal preference. The film's look is appropriate to Dick's dark, cautionary story about the high price of addiction, but it also robs performances of nuance and turns the seriousness of Dick's story into... well, a cartoon. Opinions will differ, but A Scanner Darkly is definitely worth a look--or two, if the mind-rattling plot doesn't sink in the first time around. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

• by and for people who think
  Hollywood loves Dick, and that's a fact. Philip K. Dick, that is: whenever the powers that be require a sound sci-fi brain scratcher, they turn to the pages of special K. The man behind Total Recall, Minority Report and the more than slightly less impressive Paycheck, Phil is the go-to guy for short tales of paranoia, future dystopia and drug abuse, with A Scanner Darkly representing only his second full novel to be adapted into a movie (the first being "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" which resulted... more info

• Worthy attempt but lost me eventually.
  I think to get the most out of this movie, you either need to be a class A drug user or a big fan of Phillip K Dick. However I really wanted to like this film, and for sure the rotoscoping is some of the highest quality rotoscoping you're ever likely to see. To be fair, the performances are also faultless, even Keanu was suited to his role for once.
  The problem's with the premise... like many films about drug abuse, the plot falls victim to it's own hallucinations until you almost loose track of... more info

• Bugs
  I guess some people could come to this film thinking, Keanu Reeves + Science Fiction = Action picture. It's not. It's closer to an Indie sensibility, and probably one of the best things that has happened to Sci Fi cinema in a long time, because it actually does something intelligent.
  Of course, the reason it is so intelligent is that it follows Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name (okay so that means Hollywood is now only 40 years behind literary sf) which is based on Dick's own experiences with... more info

• As a visual piece it's stunning, however the story doesn't engage.
  I absolutely love the visual style of this film, and it's a shame that since it's release not more films have used the effects. However I hate to say it, but once again Reeves' performance is a weak link in the film. The scene stealing goes to Robert Downy Jr who is fantastic in his role and provides most of the films interesting plot points.
  The story failed to engage me, as it felt like a rehash of various other drug related films mashed up with some modern Orwellian crime vision. Think, Fear and... more info

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