A Scanner Darkly movie review

A Scanner Darkly movie review
by Kira Sandage
on Wednesday, August 02, 2006

I went to see A Scanner Darkly at the La Jolla Landmark last weekend with my boyfriend John. If you ever saw Blade Runner, you should be familiar with Phillip K. Dick. He wrote the story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which Blade Runner was based on. A Scanner Darkly is a film and animation adaptation of a Dick novel of the same name and is based on Dick’s personal experience with drugs.

The film is set in Orange County seven years in the future after America has lost the war on drugs. Keanu Reeves plays an under cover cop and also a member of a drug house. He is assigned to infiltrate the home to spy on his friends in order to determine which person is the leader of the ring. Scanners like Reeves wear scramble suits to hide his true identity from the police. The problem is that police are unaware that Reeves is actually the person he is supposed to be spying on. Explaining more of the plot would both ruin the movie and serve only to confuse both the reader and myself.

The most obvious thing to mention is the use of interpolated rotoscoping, an animation technique developed by Bob Sabiston. Rotoscope animation uses vector keyframes and fills in the in-between animation for the animators. The end effect is very much like the vector-based wallpapers and illustrations that have become very popular in the last five or so years. The same animation technique was used in the film Waking Life. The visual effect is similar to downing three bottles of Vicks 44 cough syrup and then sitting down to watch Naked Lunch.

Speaking of Naked Lunch, I noticed what seemed to be nods to the Cronenberg film in A Scanner Darkly. At one point, Reeves’ friends all transform into giant insect similar to those seen in Naked Lunch and the multiple eyed creature that visits Benicio Del Toro reminded me of a mugwump for some reason.

What I enjoyed most about A Scanner Darkly was watching Robert Downey Jr.’s stimulant-induced ramblings and paranoid delusions. Robert Downey Jr. is definitely the high light of this movie. As usual, Keanu Reeves’ wooden acting, limited verbal intonation, and four facial expressions didn’t do much for me. And Winona Ryder’s coke addicted but weirdly innocent character was not much of a stretch for her either. But Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson were incredibly entertaining. Drug users will probably recognize their friends in this movie. Harrelson sometimes reminded me of my boyfriend with his relaxed and mildly confused take on the world, while Robert Downey Jr.’s paranoia and incredible urge to build tinfoil silencers reminded me of some of the more upsetting things I did with my room mate’s kitchenwear while living in Oakland. Over all the movie is incredibly entertaining, though I can’t imagine that it would be as interesting to the sober brain. A Scanner Darkly does a wonderful job of creating caricatures of the various type of drug addict while managing to still have an entertaining, albeit confusing, plot.