A Scanner Darkly

Cast, Etc.
Dir. Richard Linklater, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochrane, Winona Ryder, score by Graham Reynolds, rated R, 2006

Synopsis
In the near future, an undercover NARC winds up observing himself.

Review
Well, it's certainly an interesting-looking film. But that's about it. Based on a story by Philip K. Dick, Scanner tells the story of Robert Arctor (Reeves), an anonymous NARC a few years in the future who uses a "scramble suit" to keep his identity hidden, even from his co-workers (as all officers do, it seems); this suit randomly displays bits and pieces of millions of people to hide the person inside. Arctor's job as "Fred" is working on tracking "substance D," a highly-addictive and brain-damaging drug, and ends up getting hooked on it. His addiction starts messing with his ability to do his job; his boss "Hank" instructs him to observe Arctor and Arctor's roommates, who are believed to have something to do with the substance D racket, without knowing "Fred" is Arctor. Confusing? Yup. Arctor then goes about watching his friends through cameras throughout his house. What follows is an ultimately boring and unfulfilling film that relies too much on the novelty of the rotoscoping animation than it does on the story. Philip K. Dick's stories run the gamut from good to bad (i.e., Minority Report and Total Recall to Blade Runner), so it's hard to know how good of a movie one will be just by the author. In this case, it seems like an interesting idea, or at least the DVD cover made it sound interesting, but for the most part it's random, drugged-up psychobabble reminiscent of the spoutings of Tarantino's characters, but not nearly as cool. The cast does an okay job, for what they had to work with; if this movie had been done live-action, their actions would have been even more unintentionally comical. The rotoscoping of the animation (seen in some of those finanical commercials) is quite interesting and, with the right script, could be a foundation for some great sci-fi or fantasy films; it's possible older actors could even be used and, through the animation, made to look younger if "prequels" of any sort of movie were thought about. However, aside from the scramble suit, there doesn't seem to be a reason to have used this animation other than that it was cool and they could do it. The scramble suit could have been done digitally, I suppose, for greater cost in a live-action movie. As with most Philip K. Dick stories, there is a bit of a twist at the end, but this twist is much too little and comes much too late.

Highlights
the animation

Rating
I give this film a parched rating; even the animation isn't enough to get a bad story off the ground. As a sci-fi film, it's bad. The villain of . . . . um . . . The score by Reynolds is interesting, but overshadowed by the songs chosen.