A Scanner Darkly

I was surfing around that plethora of cable movie channels today when I came across an interesting sight on Cinemax. It was nothing less than a rotoscoped Keanu Reeves wearing some sort of gown. If you don't know what rotscoping is, just think of those cool-yet-unnecessary, Charles Schwab commercials.

Well... obviously... I was intrigued.

I pressed the info button on my remote control to find that it was a movie called A Scanner Darkly and that it was about drugs. I immediately figured that the movie was only rotoscoped for this, or other particular scenes where the protagonist was high.

Imagine my astonishment when I looked at the time and realized I had been watching rotoscoped actors such as Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and Robert Downey Jr. for an hour.

As it turns out, the entire damn movie is rotoscoped and it's fucking awesome.

Beyond the fact that the cast is just freaking amazing and totally fun to watch as they trip balls and suffer from hilarious paranoia, the movie is pretty deep (like Cthulu's kingdom deep).

Basically the premise is that America lost the war on drugs, and the government is handling it horribly. One in five people are addicted to a powerful narcotic, Substance D (better name than unobtainium), and narcotics officers hide behind, quite literally, visual clusterfucks.

When you watch the film from start to finish, it's a cynical experience. It leaves a knot in your chest. It's kind of sad that this comic-esque representation may be so close to what we as Americans actually live in. It's almost a slap in the face telling us that we're not so far off from that world. All we need is a Substance D.

Although the rotoscoping is rough on the eyes and distracting at first, it very quickly falls to the back of your mind.

I can see a whole host of reasons as to why people wouldn't like this film, but I'm going to suggest it anyways because I enjoyed the shit out of it.

I give it 4 stars out of 5.