A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Admirable film.

A lot of fun.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerFirst off, the films plot is, at times, very hard to follow because of the disorienting visuals. But all in all, the story is clever and the ending is hopeful. I found that that the theme of sacrificing one to save many is shown throughout the film. The story has a good plot twist and an ambiguous ending that left me thinking.The acting is very good. Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane, Winona Ryder, and Woody Harrelson all perform very well.The pacing is a little slow and the runtime is overlong.I did not enjoy the animation style visuals. In Waking Life, I did enjoy them because they were smoother.Pros: Clever story, a good ending, and good actingCons: Slow pacing, an overlong runtime, and disorienting visualsOverall Rating: 7.0P.S. Richard Linklater is one of my favorite directors of all time. The Before Series and Waking Life are amazing movies that I would highly recommend. Boyhood is the next film I am going to watch that he directed.

When i first saw "A scanner darkly" i was hypnotized ... for the first 15 minutes! Then, whenever i saw the changing face i could Smash my TV! The optic drives me crazy and i don't like that changing. That's awfully and no special enjoyment to me. I hope, that i never have to watch this movie again. I surely can't understand, how someone could give this movie more than 5/10 but there's a few People with better nerves out there for sure. I've seen Posters from "Waltz with Bashir", which is the same photoshoped animation look. First i wanted to see it, but now i avoid watching it, cause i fear, the makers could have made something similar to this movie. That maybe unfair, but i don't want to waste time and Money. Not a good movie for advertising this Animation-style!

I first saw this film in 2007 when I hired it from my now-defunct local Blockbuster because I was interested in seeing what the rotoscoping technique looked like. I bought the DVD a year later. Upon seeing it, I was very impressed with the graphics and animation because they were rather lifelike due to them being traced over live-action footage. The funny thing about this film is that it was set seven years from its year of release (2006), thus making it take place in, wait for it... 2013 (although this fact may seem dated in many years to come).As well as the graphics and animation style, the other positive aspects are the well-known cast of Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr, although to me Rory Cochrane is a lesser-known addition to the cast since I hadn't heard of him prior to seeing this film. In spite of this, he played a decent Charles Freck but Reeves as Bob/Fred/Bruce and Ryder as Donna/Hank/Audrey were the standouts while Downey Jr was comical as James Barris. The dialogue had a fine mix of darkness, poignancy and humour while a few of the visuals were bizarre (a policeman shooting Freck's head off in his imagination and Freck encountering an alien-like creature with multiple eyes later on in the film) in a good way. I also liked the animation and appearance of the scramble suits. The story was hard to follow at times, but I know for sure its basic premise was Arctor being addicted to Substance D and eventually going to rehab under the name of Bruce.All in all, this is a visual treat that inspired me to make my own short rotoscoped film as part of my animation course at university. To summarise, the strongest points were the cast, the dialogue, animation and graphics. 8/10.

With the use of rotoscoping, this clearly was an experimental project, that didn't entirely paid off, by the end.Its techniques and visual style help to make this an original movie to watch but when you look past this, the movie has little else to offer. The main story doesn't always work out that compelling, since most the time it is just meandering around and there isn't really being a good enough conflict in it story. At least not in its first half. It tries to create this but it doesn't ever get handled or developed properly enough and doesn't work out, until its last half hour, or so.For me the movie was just too often about nothing. I know that it's supposed to about the slow descent of a drug addict, so not everything is supposed to make sense or follow a fast paced, action packed main story but surely they could had spiced up things a bit more at times, with some shorter sequences, some more interesting dialog and by letting its main characters do some more interesting stuff. Some character now instead come across as redundant ones and too many of them don't help to let its story move along.And while the whole rotoscoping thing in this movie helps to make it unique and gives the movie a strong visual style, it was not something I was always too fond of or impressed with. Sometimes when the camera moved around the effects looked flat, literally. And besides, the whole effect looks like a layer, which you can simply apply to your movie, with any random big editing program. But apparently it all wasn't as easy as it looks, since post-production for this movie went on for 18 months.The one thing I did really like about this movie, was Robert Downey Jr.'s performance. It was the highlight of the movie for me and the only thing that was truly fun and interesting about it. Lots of other great actors also appear in this movie but none of them works out as well as Downey Jr. did. And no, Keanu Reeves is not horrible, his character is just kind of flat but I think this was more due to its writing and directing approach, that deliberately tried to make his character one that was more of an introvert one.An interesting movie experiment, that didn't entirely worked out but is still worth a watch.6/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/