The Hyperlogos

A Scanner Darkly is based on Philip K. Dick's book of the same name, a cautionary tale about government and the drug industry that was inspired by events in his own life. K. Dick had CIA and FBI files miles long; his files were ransacked on at least one occasion, and numerous people in his own life were interviewed as the government tried to find something convienient to get him in trouble for because he was something of an "agitator" - meaning that he believed in freedom. This movie makes that connection painfully clear, such as in a scene where a man on a streetcorner with a bullhorn is tasered and loaded into a van by a team of cops in less time than it takes to clean up broken glass from an auto accident - but also in the extras, in which there is footage of K. Dick discussing his governmental harassment and investigation.

It's hard to write a review of a movie that's based on a book that you've never read, but I'm going to do it anyway, because this was one of the most pointless movie creations I've ever seen. Far from freeing us to consider the content, the graphic style (highly reminiscent of the Grand Theft Auto series of games, at least the 3D ones) is utterly distracting throughout. The only times it wasn't, in fact, was when you were looking at one of the scruffier characters - they look the most real, because they went through a lot of effort to maintain that scruffy look.

The short form of the opening plot of the movie is that Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is a cop who wears a "scramble suit", a suit that is worn over the clothing and causes the wearer to appear as if their appearance was constantly shifting, a sort of rubik's cube composite of every man, woman, and child on earth. Their voice is also masked; the concept is that the wearer is 100% unidentifiable. It permits an undercover cop to make public appearances (in the costume) without compromising their identity. He lives with conspiracy theorist James Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.) and brainless wonder Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson). A last member of their group is Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane) and together they are a fantastic set of junkies, hooked on the futuristic drug "Compound D".

Compound D is a psychoactive drug in pill form that rots your brain. First you see hallucinations, and then you become more or less useless, robbed of motivation and disconnected from reality. Those who reach this last stage are shipped off to "NewPath", a company which provides rehabilitation services for the stricken.

Besides the drug issue, the other major theme in the movie is that of a complete surveiilance society. It is virtually impossible to leave the range of the cameras. Keanu's character Bob is assigned to be a Scanner - someone who watches a given household. Everything in the house is bugged and can be watched, as revealed in an amusing little sex scene - mostly amusing because it looks like something out of a video game.

Unfortunately, the movie is nothing if not disjointed. This sort of thing is a lot easier to accept in a book because it's a lot easier to decide if they are trying to leave you behind, or just not expressing themselves very well. Due to the visual style my overriding thought was always "this cutscene makes no sense". Perhaps this would have less of a negative effect on non-gamers, but given the high level of crossover between the gaming and science fiction crowds, and the general cultural acceptance of gaming that is currently growing in America (the fastest-growing group of gamers is seniors) this effect was probably a bad idea. It was pioneered for Linklater's earlier film Waking Life where it was slightly less annoying. They consider the "technology" to be more developed now than it was then, but perhaps they overdid things.1 Ultimately I'm left wondering why they didn't just mocap2 it and render the whole thing instead of doing a digital rotoscope.

Ultimately, the movie delivers a mindfuck appropriate to any conversion of a P.K. Dick novel - he seems to love twisting things around completely, which is also enjoyable to the surprise-loving moviegoer. Unfortunately, this is not enough to save it from being little more than a curiosity simply due to the unnecessary visual style. There is simply no point in turning video footage of real actors into something that looks like a video game, and this movie proves it. Actually, Linklater proved it earlier in the film Waking Life, but this movie really hammers the point home.

• 1. Actually, the process is done almost entirely by hand, and the software mostly just manages vectors. This technique could probably be replaced almost entirely with edge-detection techniques.
• 2. Motion-capture.