A Scanner Darkly

Review by Jason Gaston

A Scanner Darkly is set in the near future where the war on drugs has been lost and 20% of the population is hooked to a brand-new drug called Substance D. Now, there is a new war on drugs and one of the brand-new warriors is Keanu Reeves playing an undercover officer who is so deep undercover that even his coworkers don't know who he is.

Yeah, I know it sounds sort of like one of Bush's super secret shadow government thingies but stick with me, it gets better!

While infiltrating one of the drug rings in his super secret identity which is held in supersecret confidentiality so to speak, Keanu Reeves shares a house with Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. who are both burned out drug fiends. Coincidentally, they play burned out drug fiends in this movie too.

Things get interesting for Keanu when one of those burned-out drug fiends, specifically Robert Downey Jr., rats him out to the feds who, in turn, require that Keanu keep surveillance equipment around his house.

Normally, this wouldn't be such a bad thing except that Keanu is also addicted to Substance D and is undergoing some of the drug side effects which cause people to develop split personality or something.

You've got to admit, that's a pretty interesting premise... Hell, when I first got wind of what was happening in this movie I was actually excited. After all, there's nothing more dramatic than someone who has his loyalties divided.

However, A Scanner Darkly is nothing more than another one of those movies that takes style over substance. A lot like the coma inducing snore-fest, Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly is rendered by rotoscoping. in case you're not familiar with the term, this is basically tracing cartoons over footage that is shot with real actors. Think of the animated Lord of the Rings movie, or that video by Ah Ha, "Take on Me."

Its glorified tracing basically and don't you freaking DARE call it animation!

With this glorified tracing, A Scanner Darkly is pretty to look at... but take away rotoscoping and you're left with a pretty mundane story and flat direction. I would say without this gimmick, A Scanner Darkly would be shrugged off and forgotten in weeks.

Granted, A Scanner Darkly is more intelligent than your basic run-of-the-mill drug or science-fiction movie. Still, there is nothing exciting and nothing particularly memorable about this film aside from the style it used to bring the story to the screen. The acting is either ridiculously over-the-top or completely flat and the story, which at first looks like it's going to be all about the evils of drugs, ends up veering into some weird territory about government corruption that seems to come out of nowhere.

I wanted to like this movie simply because of its unique look, but the look is nothing against the toxicity of everything else.   It's too bad, too.  A Scanner Darkly is a beautiful failure.