Movie review: A Scanner Darkly
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Well, I’d give this one a 68% on my magical scale. The film, as I’ve found all of Philip Dick’s movies, is heavy handed and confused in such a way that it seems to fall over itself to tell a tale both lucid and impenetrable as mud, in doing so fails to deliver anything good at all. (I would give Total Recall the highest grade of the Dick movies as an FYI.)
The problem I have ultimately is that the film doesn’t make any statements, it didn’t move me in any way and it over philosophizes without purpose. There is a beauty to clarity and such a thing was missing from this movie. No matter how complicated and drawn out a film is it has the capability to be concise and clear, Scanner Darkly just didn’t have that.