Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6490 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-01-22
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Reviews
How well you respond to Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly depends on how much you know about the life and work of celebrated science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. While it qualifies as a faithful adaptation of Dick's semiautobiographical 1977 novel about the perils of drug abuse, Big Brother-like surveillance and rampant paranoia in a very near future ("seven years from now"), this is still very much a Linklater film, and those two qualities don't always connect effectively.

The creepy potency of Dick's premise remains: The drug war's been lost, citizens are kept under rigid surveillance by holographic scanning recorders, and a schizoid addict named Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is facing an identity crisis he's not even aware of: Due to his voluminous intake of the highly addictive psychotropic drug Substance D, Arctor's brain has been split in two, each hemisphere functioning separately. So he doesn't know that he's also Agent Fred, an undercover agent assigned to infiltrate Arctor's circle of friends (played by Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, and Robert Downey, Jr.) to track down the secret source of Substance D. As he wears a "scramble suit" that constantly shifts identities and renders Agent Fred/Arctor into "the ultimate everyman," Dick's drug-addled antihero must come to grips with a society where, as the movie's tag-line makes clear, "everything is not going to be OK."

While it's virtually guaranteed to achieve some kind of cult status, A Scanner Darkly lacks the paranoid intensity of Dick's novel, and Linklater's established penchant for loose and loopy dialogue doesn't always work here, with an emphasis on drug-culture humor instead of the panicked anxiety that Dick's novel conveys. As for the use of "interpolated rotoscoping"--the technique used to apply shifting, highly stylized animation over conventional live-action footage--it's purely a matter of personal preference. The film's look is appropriate to Dick's dark, cautionary story about the high price of addiction, but it also robs performances of nuance and turns the seriousness of Dick's story into... well, a cartoon. Opinions will differ, but A Scanner Darkly is definitely worth a look--or two, if the mind-rattling plot doesn't sink in the first time around. --Jeff Shannon

Synopsis
Richard Linklater's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's classic novel is a challenging, mind-bending experience that cautions about the dangers of excessive drug use as well as the government's capacity to abuse and manipulate power. Using the same interpolated rotoscoping technique that Linklater employed in 2001's WAKING LIFE, the film is an animated, trippy descent into one man's unraveling mind. Set in the not-too-distant future where a new drug, substance D, has created an epidemic, A SCANNER DARKLY charts the mental unraveling of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves). Arctor is an undercover cop who has been assigned to track a group of individuals who include the hyper-intense Luckman (Woody Harrelson), the ultra-paranoid Freck (Rory Cochrane), and the beautiful Donna (Winona Ryder). As the film unfolds and Arctor finds himself abusing substance D in order to maintain his façade, his mind begins to spin out of control, to the point where he doesn't know what's real and what isn't. Eventually, the truth comes out, leaving Arctor even more numbed. Linklater's surprisingly faithful adaptation of Dick's novel blends humor, drama, and Bob Sabiston's striking animation to deliver a thought-provoking film that will leave viewers as dazed as the film's protagonist.

Customer Reviews

Clearly, or darkly?
A Scanner Darkly was my first Phillip K. Dick novel, and was a surprisingly difficult read. Difficult not just to get a fix on his writing style but to get my head around what Dick was trying to say. In the end though, it was worth it, being one of those experiences where the moment the last page turns, the realisation comes of how profoundly brilliant and unexpected the entire thing has been.
The film strays very little from the book; in fact, `straying' is the wrong word, as Linklater has really gone all out to be faithful to the original story here, with an obvious and unflagging respect. In the name of continuity one can appreciate that some changes were necessary, for example, the complete omission of the character of Jerry Fabin, instead coalescing he and Charles Freck into the one body, but none that will permit anyone to moan. Most of the big scenes from the book are here, gloriously visual, and the ones that while missing, are not missed (for example, Arctor's visit to an abusive drug dealer's girl).
The film, while by no means short, does seem to be truncated in a way that hampers the progression of the story. Arctor's mental descent was a huge part of the novel, with many mind-boggling pages spent following the slow death of his brain cells and the gradual division of his brain from his mind and his mind from his ability to live. The film doesn't give a different version of events, but how quickly it all occurs gives a feeling of slight uneasiness and all seems just a little off-kilter. Perhaps this is a blessing after all, as Linklater could easily have decided to go down the time-ignorant route and spent a good fifteen minutes devoted to artistic shots and meaningless, predictable, endless prose as Arctor's world unravels.
A Scanner Darkly is about a number of things, namely drug addiction, relationships and their ensuing fragility, state control, corruption, ends justifying the means and personal hell, but comes nowhere close to being a lecture in morality. It is one of Dick's most personal pieces of writing, and I don't believe he was really trying to say anything, just to tell a story; people's stories that, while packaged in a box that screams the colours of science-fiction, are far from complete works of fiction.

"what does a scanner see?"
It is widely accepted by those in the know that Philip K Dick wrote some of the most important and imaginative science fiction of the past 50 years. However, another thing that is widely regarded as a truism is the fact that Dicks work is notoriously difficult to adapt for the screen, either loosing much of what made it special and thereby gaining acceptance, such as Total Recall adapted from We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, and Spielberg's Minority Report, adapted from the Dick short story of the same name but abandoning much of the paranoia of the original work in order to reach a wider audience, or attempting to stay true to the source material, and thereby alienating much of its target audience, the case in point here being Bladerunner, a critical disaster on its release and now regarded as one of the best movies ever made. Thankfully, in adapting Dick's seminal work about drugs and identity, Richard Linklater has managed to hold onto the core of what makes the book great.
Set in the not to distant future, the film concerns itself with the life of Bob Arctor, played with the usual sense of disconnection by Keanu Reeves, a habitual drug user who appears to have no goal in life other than to get high and hang out with his equally directionless junkie friends, played with a certain sense of comedy by Robert Downey Jnr, Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane. However, what none of them know is that Arctor is really an undercover cop called Fred, who is using this identity to investigate a new, highly addictive drug called substance D (the D stands for death), a drug so addictive that one use gets you hooked (to quote one memorable line "there are people who are Substance D addicts, and there are people who haven't taken it yet"). Unfortunately, it's not long before Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D himself, and as a result he begins to loose his sense of identity.
Doesn't sound like much of a plot, and really it isn't, but this is not a movie about action and excitement. Like the original book, the movie concerns itself with the individual's sense of self, and the effect that prolonged drug use can have on this, a narrative tool the Dick's has used in a number of his works. That Linklater manages to successfully transpose this idea to the screen and make it the films core idea is a testament to the fact that he both directed the film and adapted the book himself, and is clearly in love with the subject matter.
The other most significant thing about this movie is the way it is presented, using a technique known as rotoscoping, whereby a filmed image is painted over, giving it the look of animation. That this technique can at times appear quite unsettling, as background objects appear to move slightly and perspective can be altered in some very subtle ways, only serves to enhance the films themes.
This is an amazing piece of cinema, certainly worth a look if you are interested in intelligent, thought provoking cinema, and if Linklater occasionally allows the film to wander, particularly in some of the "sitting around talking" scenes, and can't quite get across the full, horrific effect that Substance D has on Arctors rapidly fracturing personality, it is not through want of trying. Abandon your preconceptions, and give this film a go, you never know, you might just find something you like.

Dark, but illuminating!
One of the excelllent things (I think) about the Amazon DVD rental service is that you're tempted into renting movies you wouldn't go to the cinema to watch - what a pain spending c£15 on two tickets, drinks, nosh etc only to be disappointed. It's worth a gamble with the rental scheme.

So, A Scanner Darkly - any good? Well, in short, yes, very good indeed. Cast - excellent. Keanu Reeves plays the lead in true to form Keanu style, which fits very well into the overall paranoia feel of the film. Great support from Robert Downey Jnr and Woody Harrelson - the former truly fantastic I thought. Winona Ryder ably assists too.

The animation - superb. Cericel style colouring over live action works brilliantly in this film. Don't be put off - it really does work and adds to the rich texture of the movie.

The story - great. A dark, mind disintegration of a plot, with a couple of twists, told expertly. Having seen other Philip K Dick adaptations in the big budget Hollywood style (Minority Report etc - which are very good themselves), this is highly original and, one senses, much closer to the thought processes of the author and the brooding atmosphere he wanted to convey.

So, all in all, I can highly recommend this. Enjoy!