A Scanner Darkly (**1/2)

The talkiness of writer-director Richard Linklater and the paranoid vision of the late Philip K. Dick combine in this realistically animated thriller that seems to promise a more complex entertainment than it ultimately delivers.

The latest but not the last adaptation of the fiction of more-popular-than-ever dead guy Philip K. Dick is also the latest-not-last from ever-versatile writer-director Richard Linklater. (His fiction version of Fast Food Nation is already in the can.) Linklater’s films have ranged from the sweetly romantic Before Sunrise/Before Sunset to the Jack Black comedy School of Rock, but seem to have talkiness in common. Of the eight PKD-inspired feature films (all posthumously released), starting with 1982’s Blade Runner and including Minority Report and Paycheck, this is possibly the least action-oriented. In its paranoid vision of the near future, it recalls Total Recall (another PKD film) as well as the Matrix. That last is partly because it stars Keanu Reeves, or at least an animated version of him. Like Linklater’s Waking Life, the movie is digitally rotoscoped (filmed with actors, then turned into animation), though in a more realistic style. Reeves is an undercover drug agent who (in the cleverest use of the animation) wears a disguise that randomizes his face into a digital mélange. Even his boss, in the same disguise, doesn’t know who he is. We first see him in this costume giving a pep talk to a vice squad tackling the insidious substance D. Meanwhile, we see Keanu underneath, trying to ignore a whispering voice that tells him that what he’s saying is all bullshit. It’s a great setup with layers of possibilities. By the 15-minute mark I was getting nervous that I was missing something, especially when Robert Downey Jr. came on babbling like whitewater. Like a junkie, actually. We spend an unfortunate amount of time hanging out with junkies. Another one is played by Woody Harrelson, channeling his inner Gary Busey. No fault of either actor, but these are somewhat irritating characters. The girlfriend character (Winona Ryder) is a little better. The movie’s early energy dissipates by the last half hour; the inevitable twist ending delivers too little, too late. Another Dick adaptation followed this. Appropriately, it’s called Next.

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