Review: A Scanner Darkly (2006)

A Scanner Darkly
reviewed by Sam Osborn

rating: 3.5 out of 4

Director: Richard Linklater
Screenplay: Richard Linklater (based on the novel by Phillip K. Dick)
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson
MPAA Classification: R (drug and sexual content, language and a brief
violent image)

Richard Linklater's first foray with the animation technique
rotoscopy was 1999's collection of philosophic parables, Waking Life.
The animation technique, which uses DV video footage layered beneath
animation, was used to lift Waking Life's ramblings onto whispery
wings of the surreal. The film wasn't mind-blowing, as some of its
cultish fans would believe, but its animation tricked us into thinking
so. Now enter A Scanner Darkly, Linklater's second indulgence with
rotoscopy. The film is, yes, an actual film, complete with characters,
a plot, story arcs and everything. The point is, however, that A
Scanner Darkly represents an example where a film benefits from
rotoscopy without heavily relying on it. It's strong enough to stand
on its own un-stylized two feet. But it'd be like a beautiful woman
wearing rags: impressive to a point. Only when the beautiful woman goes
out and treats herself to that snappy, new, rotoscopy-infused dress do
we really get starry-eyed.

The story is essentially a lesson tale, bemoaning the plague of drug
addiction through a fictional near-future drug called Substance D. The
drug's effects are never explained, but they're consequences are
indulgently underscored with trippy bouts of psychosis and
hallucination that are sent high-flying by the fluid animation. The
drug comes in the form of red pills and seems to have the symptoms of
physical addiction that Heroin totes, forcing characters to use if they
want survive in their everyday world, but, at the same time, forcing
out windows of paranoid debilitation. Keanu Reeves plays Robert Arctor,
an informant for the Orange County Police who dons a special full-body
suit that relays dozens of images across its surface to hide Arctor's
physical and vocal identity. They use him to track the undercover
working's of those occupying his home, including Donna Hawthorne
(Winona Ryder), James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), Charles Freck (Rory
Cochrane), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson) and Arctor himself, as they
only know that the suited informant is one of those living within
Arctor's home. The story snags at this stage, lingering between the
household characters' growing conspiratorial paranoia and Arctor's
depressed, shadowy life as an informant. It refuses to progress and
instead takes stabs at being another Linklater character study. This
isn't what the preview trailers promised, granted, but Linklater
knows how to make a film talk. I bet just one of Linklater's films
has more dialogue than all of Michael Bay's films put together. He
knows how to make dialogue work in any situation, even those involving
conspiratorial, sci-fi drug addiction. And Arctor's narrative
dialogue often sings in harmony with the symphonic score whaling on the
soundtrack. Eventually, though, the tale moves on and continues with
the plot-driven story it promised.

For all the abuse Keanu Reeves takes, he's proving himself to be a
damned useful actor. Between The Lake House and A Scanner Darkly he's
shown he can dominate the depressed, middle-aged man. Will Mr. Reeves
be stapled to these character actor roles? Maybe, but if he can pull
them all off like this, who cares? His co-stars help him along,
especially Winona Ryder, whose been slowly making her way back from
that image-exploding shoplifting incident from a couple years ago.
She's still a fine and beautiful actress, even if she reminds us now
of Kiera Knightley instead of good ole' Winona Ryder. Robert Downey
Jr. also builds on his rebound effort with the slimeball creep role of
James Barris, returning strongly from last year's brilliant buddy-cop
farce Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

The drug addiction lesson avoids the preachy, moral-schlepping effect
of, say, the racial teachings of Crash, probably because we're not
meant to realize its intentions until the end. At the end credits,
there's a sentimental post-script by Phillip K. Dick, dedicating the
story to a list of friends crippled by the drug demon. But Dick's
source material and Linklater's adaptation both do well to weave an
otherwise dull morality schpeel into a fascinating, albeit sometimes
stalling, tale of conspiracy, technology and paranoia. The film may
think it's smarter than it actually is, hinting at a trace of Waking
Life's pretension, but Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder make for
compelling subjects in a mostly intelligent imagining of a grim but
colorfully-imagined Dick-ian view of our future.

-www.samseescinema.com