A Scanner Darkly
by Richard Linklater
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DVD details
Actor: Keanu Reeves, Mitch Baker, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Sean Allen (II)Director: Richard Linklater
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-12-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of A Scanner Darkly
DVD Review: Form over substance
Summary: 1 Stars
Form over substance! Dialogue is monotonous and sleep-inducing. Plot is not terribly intriguing. The only cool aspect is the "cartoonization" of the actors. Overall, go watch something else.DVD Review: New Age Art ??
Summary: 2 Stars
OMG! The plot line might of been good I do not know as I could not stand to watch this form of animation.The way the artists drew the faces of these characters was terrible.The shadows of the faces were like they were moving all the time,it was madness to watch.It was like the shadows had a life of their own and it was very irritating to watch,so I quit after about ten minutes.I could not stand to watch it.It drove me nuts.DVD Review: bummer
Summary: 2 Stars
The plot confused and depressed me. Keanu Reeves is perfect for this role. His poor character has been dazed and confused for so long it's not true. It's one twisted, nightmarish sci-fi tale about the horror of drug addiction. Much more effective than the guy who used to come on TV years ago with an egg and a frying pan.("This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs".) 'Just say no' to Substance D. I would because it causes a lobotomy and knowing that would be enough for me to not take it. Now the "interpolated rotoscoping" technique -- Been there done that. It's just not as cool the second time. WAKING LIFE, also directed by the same guy, was fantastic and fun to watch. This here, not so much. On top of that I saw this animation in TV commercials which pretty much did for this style of animation what TV commercials did for all those classic rock songs I used to sort of like.
Credit for staying respectful to the source material, but it didn't work for me. Not the worst PDK film adaptation though. I'm always waiting for the next BLADE RUNNER that will never come. If you dig the animation in this movie check out WAKING LIFE. The bonus stuff is pretty cool too. And drink a bottle of cough syrup.
DVD Review: Looks even better in Blu-ray
Summary: 5 Stars
I have this on normal DVD format so I thought I get it in Blu-ray since I just bought a new player. I think this is a great DVD to have in your Blu-ray collection. The whole comic look to the movie is what I really enjoyed. It just looked awesome seeing all the colors in full detail.DVD Review: Great movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a great movie. It had a specific message, and it really made me think and consider some of the things that go on in our world. I would definitely recommend it.
Description of A Scanner Darkly
Set in a not-too-distant future where America has lost its "war" on drugs, Fred, an undercover cop, is one of many people hooked on the popular drug, Substance D, which causes its users to develop split personalities. Fred is obsessed with taking down Bob, a notorious drug dealer, but due to his Substance D addiction, he does not know that he is also Bob. Based on a classic novel by Philip K. Dick. Starring Keanu Reeves ("Constantine," "The Matrix" trilogy), Academy Award-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Winona Ryder ("Girl, Interupted," "Mr. Deeds"), Academy Award and Emmy-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Robert Downey Jr. ("Good Night, And Good Luck" "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang"), and Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominee and Emmy-winner Woody Harrelson ("North Country," "The People vs. Larry Flynt"). Directed by Academy Award-nominee Richard Linklater ("Before Sunset," "Dazed and Confused"). Filmed in live-action, and then animated using the same critically acclaimed process that Linklater used in his previous film, "Waking Life."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
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