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A Scanner Darkly (Widescreen)
Additional DVD options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
DVD
December 19, 2006 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| $30.00 | — |
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A Scanner Darkly | — | — |
Genre | Science Fiction & Fantasy, Drama, Action & Adventure/Crime, Mystery & Suspense/Crime, Action & Adventure See more |
Format | AC-3, Closed-captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Multiple Formats, Animated, Color, NTSC |
Contributor | Dameon Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Palmer West, Jennifer Fox, Ben Cosgrove, Woody Harrelson, Jonah Smith, Rory Cochrane, Erwin Stoff, Winona Ryder, Tommy Pallotta, Anne Walker-McBay, John Sloss, Richard Linklater, Robert Downey Jr., Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, Keanu Reeves See more |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 40 minutes |
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Product Description
Scanner Darkly, A (DVD) America in the near future has lost the war against drugs. Paranoia reigns as 2 out of every 10 Americans have been hired by the government to spy on the other 8 in the name of national security and drug enforcement. Enter Fred, a reluctant undercover cop recruited by the government. To maintain his cover, Fred regularly ingests the popular Substance D. The drug has caused Fred to develop a split personality, of which he is unaware; his alter ego is Bob Arctor, a drug dealer. Fred's superiors set up a hidden holographic camera in his home as part of a sting operation to snare Bob. A "scramble suit" that changes his appearance allows Fred to appear on camera as Bob and prevents his colleagues from knowing his true identity. The camera in Fred/Bob's apartment reveals that Bob's friends regularly betray one another for the chance to score more drugs.
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Product Dimensions : 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches; 3.2 ounces
- Item model number : 2210368
- Director : Richard Linklater
- Media Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, Dolby, Multiple Formats, Animated, Color, NTSC
- Run time : 1 hour and 40 minutes
- Release date : December 19, 2006
- Actors : Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane
- Subtitles: : English, Spanish, French
- Producers : Steven Soderbergh, Anne Walker-McBay, Tommy Pallotta, George Clooney, Jonah Smith
- Language : English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Unqualified
- Studio : WarnerBrothers
- ASIN : B000JMK6LW
- Writers : Richard Linklater
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #46,645 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #1,031 in Science Fiction DVDs
- #4,655 in Action & Adventure DVDs
- #7,779 in Drama DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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And when Rory Cochrane attempts suicide with a handful of downers and a bottle of good Merlot? And is interrupted by an Argus-eyed scold with an endless list of his sins? Great stuff. You might was well live, Mr. Freck, it can’t be any worse than this.
I hadn't seen “A Scanner Darkly” in a long while, and I’d forgotten how lovely the rotoscoped images are. Seriously. Check it out! Los Angeles is transmuted into grimy yet beautiful pulsating painting. Keanu Reeves has a decaying ranch house in the suburbs, one that would be just depressing and repellent shown in “real life”. But animated, it’s a sort of wonderland of grubby decay, the strewn trash and overgrown yard transmuted into something rich and strange.
Philip K. Dick could be called the poet of paranoia. Except that frankly, Dick was no poet, not even a great writer. Few have ever had as many ideas per page, even fewer had his strange insights of the world of the drugged and mentally damaged. But his prose was clunky and his characters barely sketched in. What Dick excelled at was finding the spaces between our reality and something disturbing and visionary behind it.
Richard Linklater’s movie is the single best realization of a Dick story I can think of. And it’s a great story for the first three quarters, scary and funny and intensely paranoid. It was a brilliant choice to film it in this lurid animation. Another filmmaker, especially a more “modern” one, would do the scramble suits in some overly literal CGI, a “vague blur”. Linklater’s vision of the constantly shifting, shuffling faces and clothing presented by the camouflage is perfect. Better than Dick’s description, really.
And could anyone have been a better pick to perform Robert Arctor than Keanu Reeves? His disconnected otherworldly face gives him a head start portraying a man whose left and right hemispheres aren’t on speaking terms. Behind his scramble suit’s mask, Reeves goes from alarm to terror to stupefaction in flickering animated expressions that show emotions John Wick has never heard of, let alone experienced. One of his better early roles.
Great casting choices all around, Harrelson and Downey and Winona Ryder. If only real world tweakers were so colorful and engaging, particularly Downey’s weasel attempts at ratting out his roommates while failing so ridiculously that it’s adorable. The movie’s one nod to sex is distanced from anything even vaguely erotic not just because of the animation but more by the off-putting creepiness of Reeves watching himself on his screens while never sure if it is himself he’s watching, or who he’s in bed with or if any of it actually happened. Aren’t drugs supposed to be fun, at least to start with? Substance D doesn’t look like a good time for anybody.
The last part of “A Scanner Darkly” where we get a peek behind the curtain of the shared delusion we call reality, that’s where the story becomes a little too conventional. A terrible conspiracy is revealed, sure, but after the kaleidoscopic look into the minds of those on Substance D, it’s too ordinary. Philip K. Dick fans who’ve read “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” or “Martian Time Slip” will know what I mean; the deeper you go down a PKD rabbit hole, when more is explained, the less reliable your knowledge and senses become. For that matter, I think it’d be a great idea to set up a Go Fund Me to raise money so Linklater could film “Palmer Eldritch”. Maybe a miniseries, to give the vast sweep of paranoid lunacy room to breathe. Or “Time Slip”. Or both.
I’ve seen just about every PKD story that’s made it to film, from the ridiculous but funny “Total Recall” to the beautiful but unnecessary “Blade Runner 2049”. It looked nice, is all I can say for that one.
Rutger Hauer and astonishing visuals saved Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” from being a pretty meh adaptation of one of Dick’s so-so books. “Minority Report” was fun, fast moving, full of ideas and Tom Cruise’s nose. Decent. “Total Recall”, the first one, was fun in a triple-breasted dopey Schwarznegger sort of way. The humorless and ugly 2012 remake was execrable.
Even Matt Damon couldn’t save the dull-as-dirt “Adjustment Bureau”. Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle” manages to entirely miss the point of Dick’s book while indulging in flashy photogenic Nazi stuff. Of them all, “A Scanner Darkly” is the one I think the master would have approved of, if you could have caught him in a sober lucid moment. Just about every PDK story is about the ways in which reality ain't what it used to be, if it was ever real at all; “A Scanner Darkly” plays with his favorite theme in a striking and entertaining way.
Scanner Darkly is one of those movies that didn't connect with me,
didn't assert its reality, until about the last 15 minutes.
And when it turned into "Whoa", it wasn't about plot twists or
mental coruscations, it was about the characters as individuals,
and their emotions. This movie has a heart.
Part of it for me was watching the 1st half one night, and the 2nd
half the next night. That allowed me to watch the Commentary right
after the movie, which pointed out a great deal of detail and nuance.
There's a lot more going on in this movie than just Rotoscoping.
I haven't read the book, nor any of PKD's work, except 1 short story,
a long long time ago, which I still vividly remember. So for me,
background on PKD provided by his daughter in the Commentary is great.
Scanner Darkly has, believe it or not, a lot of autobiographical aspects.
Some of the choices he made, and some of the voice-over, is wrenching.
The Commentary therefor speaks directly to PKD's visionary insights and
perspectives on what seems like a fairly mundane, boring world he lived
in then, and we live in today. And make no mistake, his vision applies
as much today, if not more so, than back then. Its highly topical, and
the Commentary gets into this topical aspect in good detail.
For fans of Keanu Reeves, and the other stars here, I think this is
excellent work by the actors, but in order to appreciate their work,
you have to find your connection with the movie. It takes a little
effort, but its highly worthwhile.
As I write this, there are blurbs about a mega-budget movie Reeves is
in, "47 Ronin". Some say its his big comeback from the Matrix. But
Scanner Darkly shows that Reeves took a very challenging role in a very
different kind of movie, and he performed superbly. In the end, Reeves
brings Bob Arctor up to the same tragic/heroic level as Neo Anderson:
--- "A present for my friends, at Thanksgiving." ---
And the same holds true for all the stars. In such a vision-heavy
story, they all bring the acting up to the level necessary to make the
characters come alive. Subtle sometimes, vivid other times. Superb.
Scanner Darkly is the kind of movie where I wonder why it didn't sell
$150-200 million at the box office, like, say, "Limitless". Being a
small, independent production shouldn't preclude commercial success.
Maybe not an easy movie, but a very good movie.
Top reviews from other countries
Ein sensationeller Trip!!
Non è il solito film di animazione 3D, è ben di più.
Lo consiglio a chi piacciono film di questo genere
Le résultat est unique ! Des graphismes magnifiques, fluides et réalistes. Je recommande, y compris pour ceux qui n'aiment pas les dessins animés.
Pour l'histoire, le scénario est très réussi : une enquête policière d'un flic infiltré dans un cercle de toxicomanes, dans le but de démonter un réseau de stupéfiants ... la fin est noire, mais bien ficelée.
Je recommande !!!
Guter Händlerservice.