Director Richard Linklater assembles as all-star cast with addictive personalities in the long-awaited release of A Scanner Darkly. The look is a combination of live-action and computer animation called interpolated rotoscoping, similar to Linklater's previous film, Waking Life.
This story comes from author Philip K. Dick's futuristic science fiction novel of the same name.
A Scanner Darkly was shot in Austin in 2004 and stars Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder. Several local actors also get the animated makeover. Turk Pipkin plays a creature that torments actor Rory Cochrane.
"I play a hallucination and a guy tries to kill himself because he's addicted to these drugs and he just can't take it anymore," Pipkin said.
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8 Re:views
Linklater’s latest animated nightmare is a psychedelic commentary on the war on drugs.
 
Flix File
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Heart of the Game, The King and of course, Pirates of the Caribbean were all released this week.
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A Scanner Darkly isn’t for children or those with short attention spans. The story wanders though a society infested with covert government surveillance and neurotic junkies. Drug users in the near future have nowhere to hide when the scanner is watching.
"We're dealing with people who just aren't mentally stable whatsoever. We're talking about hallucinations, drug dependency," actress Angela Rawna said.
Reeves plays an undercover cop who's supposed to track his roommates, Downey Jr. and Harrelson, to find out which one is drug dealer. A medical interrogation reveals his own growing addiction to Substance D.
The look and feel of the movie establishes a mind-bending mood, but the pace is very tranquil. There are a few laughs here and there, but overall the plot lacks much tension and might even leave you a little dazed, just like the characters.
"I think it's a sci-fi film more than it is a stoner film. It's a film about paranoia at a lot of levels as well," Pipkin said.
Other Dick stories adapted for the big screen include Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.
A Scanner Darkly is rated R. It's in limited release and showing at Arbor Cinema.
