Plot
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
Release Year: 2006
Rating: 7.1/10 (53,292 voted)
Critic's Score: 73/100
Director:
Richard Linklater
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr.
Storyline In a totalitarian society in a near future, the undercover detective Bob Arctor is working with a small time group of drug users trying to reach the big distributors of a brain-damaging drug called Substance D. His assignment is promoted by the recovery center New Path Corporation, and when Bob begins to lose his own identity and have schizophrenic behavior, he is submitted to tests to check his mental conditions.
Writers: Philip K. Dick, Richard Linklater
Cast: Rory Cochrane
-
Charles Freck
Robert Downey Jr.
-
James Barris
Mitch Baker
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Brown Bear Lodge Host
Keanu Reeves
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Bob Arctor
Sean Allen
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Additional Fred Scramble Suit Voice
(voice)
Cliff Haby
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Voice from Headquarters
(voice)
Steven Chester Prince
-
Cop
Winona Ryder
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Donna Hawthorne
Natasha Valdez
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Waitress
Mark Turner
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Additional Hank Scramble Suit Voice
(voice)
Woody Harrelson
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Ernie Luckman
Chamblee Ferguson
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Medical Deputy #2
Angela Rawna
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Medical Deputy #1
Eliza Stevens
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Arctor's Daughter #1
Sarah Menchaca
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Arctor's Daughter #2
Trivia:
Director Richard Linklater intended to film the Philip K. Dick novel "Ubik," but decided to film Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" instead after Wiley Wiggins, who played the main character in Linklater's film
Waking Life, suggested it to him.
Goofs:
Continuity:
When Bob leaves Donna's apartment after she rejected him because of "snoring too much coke", Donna runs after him barefoot. In the parking lot however she suddenly wears sandals.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Freck:
[on the phone]
I looked them up. They're aphids. They're in my hair, on my skin, in my lungs. And the pain, Barris, it's unreasonable. They're all over the place. Oh, they've completely gotten Millie too.
User Review
extraordinary and faithful adaptation of one of PK Dick's most personal
Rating: 9/10
When someone on a trip starts to wig out, you take them someplace quiet
and talk soothingly and assure them that everything's going to be OK.
But as the tagline of this film makes clear, for these characters
everything is most definitely NOT going to be OK.
For those who haven't read the book, it's important to know what you're
getting into. PK Dick wrote this novel as a way of telling the story of
how he and his friends in the early '70s damaged and destroyed
themselves with drugs. He tells this story within the framework of a
surreal science fiction thriller, but many of the scenes are straight
from his own experiences with the unpleasant consequences of people
using drugs and disintegrating mentally.
This film does an amazing job of capturing the feel and tone of the
book as well as the paranoia, perceptual distortions, and chaos of
hallucinogenic overindulgence. Add to that a story that only gradually
emerges from the madness, but by the end brings in a lot of heavy ideas
such as the existence of free will, whether ends justify means, etc.
There is a sense of consequence to what happens in the film, a sense of
despair at what has been lost. So this story of drug-addled losers
becomes the story of the human struggle for identity and meaning.
I have a couple of minor quibbles regarding scenes from the book that
only partially made the cut (no explanation for the significance of "If
I'd known it was harmless I would have killed it myself, no little kid
to explain how 6 and 3 gears means 18 speeds). Still, most adaptations
of PK Dick stories take a few basic ideas and try to shape them into
more conventional films that fit into established genres. Even when it
works, such as with Blade Runner or Total Recall, it's not really PK
Dick. Not so this film. This is PK in all his dark and perverse and
deeply thoughtful glory.
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