britesparc
Posts: 1968
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Manchester
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A Scanner Darkly may come from the same author as Blade Runner and Minority Report, but Richard Linklater’s adaptation has more in common with Naked Lunch that with those other classics of dystopian sci-fi angst. However, it shares many qualities with other superior adaptations of Philip K Dick’s work, being as it is set in a near-future world very similar to our own, but with several exaggerated eccentricities which reflect contemporary concerns. Chief of these is the cast’s principal narcotic of choice, Substance D – a mind-altering drug which currently has about a quarter of America’s populace in its addled grip. Downey Jr’s character describes humanity as divided between Substance D addicts, and those who haven’t tried it yet. Reeves plays Bob Arctor, an undercover narcotics officer who has infiltrated a gang of D addicts in order to bring them down, and hopefully unravel a major drugs ring. However, all is not what it seems, especially after Arctor is tasked with investigating himself by his superiors, who believe he may be the ringleader. Arctor – slipping further into D-lerium, and, it transpires, on the run from a peaceful civilised life of normalcy – grows increasingly unsure as to whether he’s a cop masquerading as a druggie, or vice versa. This off-kilter, shifting-sand narrative is reinforced by Linklater’s use of CG rotoscoping, rendering the whole movie with an otherworldly animated sheen that reflects the disorienting nature of D-addiction. As well as offering scope for believable hallucinations – such as when Harrelson and Downey Jr turn into giant cockroach-men – it also makes events one step removed from reality, taking the entire movie into a blurry-edged hinterland between the believable and the fantastical. It also offers innovative effects opportunity, such as the cops’ Scramble Suits, which alternative between infinitely shifting images of innumerable people, meaning the user is permanently unrecognisable as anyone. This is a truly mesmerising effect, and we can add the Scramble Suit to the lightsaber and the hover-board in cinema’s list of groovy sci-fi gubbins (I’d also like to include the groovy spinny stun gun from Minority Report, too). All this adds up to a disorienting and dark journey through a fractured mind, rather than a simple cops-n-robbers noir (hence the Naked Lunch comparisons). However, with its beleaguered, world-weary anti-hero, his dubious associates, and a potential femme fatale, a noir it very much is, albeit a rainbow coloured one. And this, really, is its biggest flaw: as a noir, the climactic reservation is a let down, the denouement disappointing. It just can’t keep up with the frantic kaleidoscope of the previous hour or so; the disparate story threads don’t quite hang together and some characters are quietly dropped and never mentioned again. Perhaps that’s the point; it’s a crazy whacked-out world full of disorienting characters, so it’s perhaps fitting that the movie doesn’t quite gel 100 percent. However, for the most part the film is a tremendous success: the world the characters live in is recognisably our own despite the odd piece of future tech; the performances are all top-drawer, and it’s nice to see Reeves on top again – the man might not have the greatest range in the world, but he can do downtrodden and beleaguered in his sleep. Arctor is almost like a grown-up Ted S. Preston: the middle-aged version of the stoner chic Reeves specialised in fifteen years ago. It’s an impressive performance in a very impressive film.
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