A Scanner Darkly
Phillip K. Dick’s parable about how drug use can be so serious you can actually start to lose your identity, has been turned into a fairly entertaining movie by Linklater. Using his slacker stoner origins from Dazed And Confused and applying it to the sci-fi genre, Linklater made the daring decision to present his story in rotoscope animation. The final effect is both interesting and distracting: It gives the story and various hallucinations an effect like no other, yet makes a number of scenes look absolutely ridiculous and silly. In addition, having the undercover agents wear some kind of “morphing” outfit quickly wears thin on the viewer’s patience. As for the cast, Reeves is his usual brain-dead self, but it works well in the context of his drugged-out character; Downey comes close to stealing the show but never quite does it, but it’s fascinating watching the way he outsmarts himself in the film’s final scenes; Harrelson is annoying and braying, basically playing an exaggerated version of his real life stoner persona; Ryder is cute and sexy for the first time in a long time, and the major twist involving her character is quite well done; and Cochrane is a shining example of a purely extraneous character, though his final scene is absolutely hilarious. In the end the paranoia of the characters begins to take over the movie itself, with some bits in there merely to confuse (did Reeves have a family?), but the film’s strongest quality is certainly in its obvious rewatch value (similiar to The Usual Suspects) where a second viewing knowing the plot twists going in can be just as enjoyable as the first. Overall, a noble effort to mix sci-fi and drug movies with some success…
8/10