A SCANNER DARKLY
Year: 2006
USA: Warner Independent Pictures
UK: Warner Bros International UK
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane, Melody Chase, Eliza Stevens, Sarah Menchaca, Lisa Marie Newmyer, Dameon Clarke, Natasha Valdez, Marco Perella, Steven Chester Prince, Leif Anders, Turk Pipkin, Alex Jones, Mitch Baker, Angela Rawna, Chamblee Ferguson, Wilbur Penn, Ken Webster, Hugo Perez, Rommel Sulit, Christopher Ryan, Leila Plummer, Jason Douglas, Sean Allen, Mark Turner, Cliff Haby
Director: Richard Linklater
Country: USA
USA & UK: 100 mins
USA Rated: R for drug and sexual content, language and a brief violent image
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong drug references, language and sex
USA Release Date: 28 July 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 14 July 2006 (Limited Release - wider)
USA Release Date: 7 July 2006 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 18 August 2006
Synopsis
Set in the near future in Suburban Orange County, California.
America's endless and futile war on drugs has become one and the same with its war on terror. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an unwilling undercover cop is ordered to begin spying on his friends, Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder) and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane). When he is instructed to increase the surveillance on himself, he is launched on a paranoid journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode.
Based on legendary science-fiction author Philip K Dick's own experiences, A SCANNER DARKLY tells the darkly comedic, caustic, but deeply tragic tale of drug use in the modern world. The film plays like a graphic novel come to life with live-action photography overlaid with an advanced animation process—a method known as interpolated rotoscoping, first employed in writer/director Richard Linklater's 2001 film WAKING LIFE — to produce a haunting version of America, seven years from now.
Written for the screen and directed by Richard Linklater from the classic novel by Philip K Dick.