Artsy deluxe
'Scanner' picks up on style, not substance
Rated R, 100 minutes
Friday, July 14, 2006

By Todd Jorgenson Film Critic

Richard Linklater continues to be one of our most innovative visual filmmakers with A Scanner Darkly, another style-over-substance effort with more cult potential than mainstream appeal.

The film is one of the more cerebral and introspective adaptations of a novel by Philip K. Dick, whose science-fiction works have yielded action thrillers such as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report, among others.

It marks Linklater's second foray into the animated technique known as rotoscoping, created by an Austin company as a way of capturing live-action sets and characters in animated form, allowing them to be supplemented by fanciful computer-drawn embellishments in a pop-art style resembling a mix between a painting and a comic book.

Scanner puts the style to better use than Waking Life, Linklater's 2001 cult favorite about an existential dream world, where it undermined the performances and functioned mainly as a visual gimmick.

While Linklater's adaptation of Dick's semiautobiographical novel is steadfastly faithful to its source, the screenplay is more tedious than provocative, as it bogs down in an abundance of talky vignettes while lacking narrative momentum and cohesion.

The film takes a bleak view of the ongoing drug war in telling the story of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), an undercover cop in near-future Orange County who has paranoid delusions after beginning government-ordered surveillance of his girlfriend (Winona Ryder) and his slacker buddies (Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.) that launches Arctor's drug-addicted alter ego.

The animation is certainly cool, even if its ability to enhance the material is debatable. This film provides a worthwhile showcase in spots, really kicking into gear during a couple of amusing hallucination sequences and a wild freeway chase that jumps off the screen. The chameleonic "scramble suit" at the core of the story is an achievement.

The film deserves credit for its character-driven approach and its modest futuristic vision, one that resembles the contemporary world in most ways, and is free of the gratuitous gadgets and sanitized cityscapes that dominate many science-fiction interpretations.

There are certainly some compelling and thought-provoking moments relating to drug addiction, mixed with a clever satirical edge. However, while fans of the book will no doubt be intrigued (and patient for a film version that has been rumored for several years), Linklater's episodic head-trip script and deliberate pace can be frustrating to outsiders.

Linklater remains one of the most versatile and prolific directors working today. But as in Scanner Darkly, his ambition and skill often are compromised by pretentious touches that feel overly artsy and calculated.