Who would have thought that Richard Linklater, the hangdog auteur behind "Dazed and Confused" and "Boyhood," would bring one of Philip K. Dick’s trippiest stories to the big screen, through a kaleidescopic animation process no less?
"Blade Runner" might be the most dazzling Dick adaptation, but "A Scanner Darkly" is the most devastating. Keanu Reeves stars as a druggie who is also a government informant, so he goes from getting high with his friends to ratting them out. (Thanks to the incredible, ever-shifting "scramble suits," you can never truly identify a fellow agent.) The story was autobiographical to Dick, who was a drug addict prone to hallucinations and depression, and the film is dedicated to those lost to drug addiction, which makes the film seem more dour than it is; it’s not.
It’s frequently funny, with a fine supporting cast (that includes Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder) and some truly jaw-dropping visuals. Never has a stylistic aesthetic so brilliantly meshed with the author’s sensibilities.
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