A Scanner Darkly
Reviewed by: Joshua Starnes
Rating: 10 out of 10
Movie Details: View here
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=14720

Cast:
Keanu Reeves as Fred/Bob Arctor
Winona Ryder as Donna
Robert Downey Jr. as Barris
Woody Harrelson as Luckman
Rory Cochrane as Freck

Review:
No one knows who Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is, including himself. He
could be a deep undercover officer of the Orange County Sheriffs
Department, codenamed Fred, posing as a supplier and trying to find
the source of the new super-narcotic Substance D. Or he could simply
be Bob Arctor, a man who left his life behind for the warm embrace
of drug addiction. His personal breakdown is compounded when 'Fred'
is assigned to investigate 'Bob' who is suspected of being the major
supplier of Substance D. His breakdown of identity is compounded by
a breakdown of perception caused by his increasing use of Substance
D, to the point where he no longer knows what he is seeing and
reacting to.

Based on his own personal and self-described 'immense' drug
experiences, "A Scanner Darkly" was Philip K. Dick's attempt to
describe the use of drugs as both a personal and social experience.
Particularly it's use in bandaging the gulf of humanity and dulling
the pain of the essential loneliness of the human condition; and the
irony of the fact that it actually caused the very thing it was
being taken to deal with. Layered within that is Dick's own potent
and very personal paranoia. In his world-view the institutions of
man are very much out to get you and everything you fear is true.
The very thing that claims to be trying to help you is actually
causing the pain you need saving from, just like drugs. Human
institutions become a form of social drug. The only thing that
stands against this intrusion are the personal connections between
human beings; hope rises from the same place despondency does, and
it is up to each person alone to decide for themselves which they
will choose.

Richard Linklater's film version of "A Scanner Darkly" is the most
truthful and accurate adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story to date.
Dick, with his often extremely complex investigations into the
nature of identity and reality has never been the easiest author to
approach much less adapt into a visual medium, but Linklater pulls
it off with high style. He once again uses the roto-animation
technique of "Waking Life" to add a heightened sense of unreality to
a fairly real world, and in so doing creates just the right level of
unease for the audience to feel what Arctor himself is feeling.

Reeves plays Arctor as a man confused and lost to the point where he
hopes the scanners that have been implanted in his home - so that he
can surveil himself - can see him clearly because he no longer can.
Bob lusts for human contact but is no longer really capable of it.
He merely views the world instead of taking part in it, a tool for
other people to use. He has become a living scanner himself. He's
desperately trying to reach out to Donna (Winona Ryder) but can't
because, in the typical Dick conundrum, she is trying to reach out
to him but in a completely different manner and for a different
reason, and they keep missing each other. If they could find each
other, if just two people could connect in an awful world, then
everything would be saved and worth saving. But, "A Scanner Darkly"
asks, is that type of connection still possible, or has it been
subverted by the drugs of every day life, both the real ones and the
imaginary ones?

In the end, it offers only the slightest of answers and the slimmest
of hopes, because that is often all life offers as well. Whether
anyone grasps that hope it leaves open for the audience to
determine. The open-endedness and general slowness of the plot
make "A Scanner Darkly" a bit of a difficult pill to swallow, but
not an unpleasant one. As difficult and painful as it can be for
humanity to face the darkest sides of itself, the fact that it can
still ask those questions is cause for hope, and that might be all
anyone can ask for.