A Scanner Darkly

What do you get when you pair director Richard Linklater with the work of writer Philip K. Dick? A paranoid sci-fi vehicle that could have been called Dazed and Confused 2. Using the much-heralded “interpolated rotoscoping” (which involves doing animation over live-action footage), A Scanner Darkly is the strange story of Fred, a drug dealer in an America that has decisively lost the war on drugs, and his alter ego Bob Arctor, a cop. Bob, who is ordered to begin spying on his friends, ingests “substance D” in an attempt to keep undercover, develops a split personality, and spies on Fred. Conspiracies abound in this film, which takes place “seven years into the future.” Keanu Reeves, whose career is incredible if only for its unexplainable longevity, stars; two of Hollywood’s best crackpots—Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.—add levity by spacing out in diners and shooting guns, when they’re not loafing in trees, trying to decode the secret messages in the Beatles’ Abbey Road.


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