Like most works by the late Phillip K. Dick, "A Scanner Darkly" provides stinging social commentary embedded in a deeply disturbing vision of a dystopian future. Based on some of his own experiences with drug addiction and rehabilitation, Dick's 1977 novel tells the complex tale of a man who, through an illicit drug he is taking, becomes a split personality, with one half of him being an addict and the other half being a narc - but with neither half aware of the other half's existence. If that sounds like a bit of a "head trip," that is clearly Dick's intent here, for what better way to capture the dreamlike and hallucinatory nature of psychedelic, mind-altering drugs? And what better way for a filmmaker to reproduce that effect on film than through the technique known as "rotoscoping," in which live actors are filmed doing their scenes, then later drawn over and turned into seamlessly flowing animation? This is the style made famous in the 1980's with the A-Ha video "Take on Me" and Linklater's own full length feature in the '90's, "Waking Life." In the case of "A Scanner Darkly," especially, its use results in a perfect marriage of form and content.
In this prescient tale set in the "near future," Keanu Reeves plays the undercover cop, Agent Fred, who, under the pseudonym Bob Arctor, is sent to live in a home with several known drug addicts: Barris, played by Robert Downey Jr. and Luckman, played by Woody Harrelson. When Fred begins taking the newly fabricated drug known as "Substance D," which causes the two hemispheres of the brain to disconnect and go to war with one another, Fred/Arctor becomes essentially two distinctly separate persons, so that, in his capacity as an undercover agent, he is actually spying on himself without realizing it. Winona Ryder appears as Donna, the beautiful but sexually frigid coke addict who becomes Arctor's girlfriend.
"A Scanner Darkly" is an easy film for a viewer to get lost in, so it pays to know a little something about the story before heading into it. As a screenwriter, Linklater captures the woozy insubstantiality of the drug experience well enough but often at the expense of narrative consistency and coherence, especially for the uninitiated. I'm afraid lots of people may become frustrated and confused near the beginning and simply tune out. That would be a real shame because the movie turns into a darkly fascinating rumination on the effect drug use has on the mind, while at the same time raising the ethical issue of just how far the government should go in "sacrificing" innocent victims to achieve a desired, perhaps even laudable, end. At times the movie may seem to be playing both sides of the drug-war fence, yet the sophistication and complexity of Dick's vision keeps it from becoming either an anti-government screed or an anti-drug diatribe.
Some of the dialogue comes off as corny and over earnest, but much of it is incisive and darkly humorous, with Barris and Larkman, in particular, hitting delicious comic heights in their paranoid/delusional ravings and interchanges.
