A Scanner Darkly

"A Scanner Darkly"
Richard Linklater, 2006

There are swarms of insects crawling out of Charlie's (Rory Cochrane) hair. The bug-eyed man tries to wash them away, but they won't disappear. The bugs aren't real, though. Charlie, we soon learn, is just another victim of the extremely addictive drug, Substance D, which slowly eats away at the brain. Much of the population is addicted to it and, like Charlie's insects, their paranoia and hallucinations intrude on all parts of their lives, and even into the film's very visuals. "A Scanner Darkly," which is based on a science-fiction novel that is written by Philip K. Dick, uses a technique called rotoscoping, which gives all of the characters and their environments a bizarre, shifting quality. It is not used as a gimmick, though the filmmakers may have benefited by refraining from animating everything, particularly during a flashback sequence. Rather, the rotoscoping successfully relays the detachment people feel from each other and from their unpleasant realities. We see a highly vocal man, who criticizes society for letting itself become addicted to Substance D, get dragged into a police van, but the onlookers act unperturbed. We wonder, does society not care about its own problems, or are people merely unsure about how to deal with their issues?

In an effort to curb the widespread addiction, the government uses such big-brother tactics as listening in on cell phone conversations and placing secret cameras within homes. Even the drug investigators themselves work in an environment where they are detached from one another - they wear full-body suits that project constantly shifting images of many people in an effort, presumably, to protect their identities. It is in this workplace that we meet our protagonist, an investigator named Bob, who is played by the always, though this time appropriately, saturnine Keanu Reeves. He lives in a house with other drug addicts, including his love interest Donna (Winona Ryder), and a talkative drug dealer named James, who is played by an amusing Robert Downey, Jr.

"A Scanner Darkly" has a number of interesting characters, and it brings up a number of fascinating questions. But I have the irksome feeling that we are merely being presented with a slice of these characters' lives. The scenes don't always flow together well, and the film tends to drag whenever Downey, Jr. is not on-screen to entertain us. And there is the aforementioned flashback, which depicts Bob's former life with his family; it raises the possibility that he was not happy, which is why he turned to Substance D. But then, this theme, this character's unhappiness with suburban life, isn't developed; it awkwardly stands as is. "A Scanner Darkly" is a good film, but it had the potential to be great. It is a film that remains as frustratingly incomplete as its unfulfilled characters.

Rating: 7.5

First Viewed: 8/6/08, on Blu-ray Disc - IMDb