I wish the material, taken from Philip K. Dick's novel, was worthy of the care and vision involved in the look of the film. Keanu Reeves plays a character named "Fred," an undercover drug agent in Orange County. Fred spends much of his time wearing a "scramble" suit, a jumpsuit that conceals the wearer's identity from everyone else. The drug of choice is a lethally addictive pill called Substance D, which we're told causes disassociation between the two hemispheres of the brain.
What does this mean? Fred may also be a small-time junkie and dealer named Bob Arctor, who spends most of his time chillin' with Donna (Winona Ryder) and two fellow druggies (Robert Downey, Jr. and Woody Harrelson). This split personality idea is perhaps the biggest problem with A Scanner Darkly, it just isn't dramatized effectively. We never really know if Fred/Arctor is playing a game to fool his friends or just crazy. The result is too much of Downey and Harrelson's stoner ramblings in scenes that have no payoff.
The drugs take their toll on Fred, and he eventually winds up in a rehab center which may also be the source of Substance D. This plot strand, constantly referred to, begins to be developed just as the film ends.
I'm convinced that on a literal level the plot of Scanner makes no sense, especially sense the drug dealing food chain never goes higher that the four main characters. Since A Scanner Darkly was published in 1977, our understanding has changed about where drugs come from, how they are filtered to certain segments of society, and how hard it is to do anything about both addiction and the conditions that create it. The failure of A Scanner Darkly, made by a prolific and original-minded filmmaker, is the use of bold animation to spotlight moldy ideas.
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