What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. On the pretty short list of movies wherein I read the book prior to the movie's release. When I learned my favorite director was filming an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book, I was intrigued. Dick writes dystopian science-fiction that has been the inspiration for many films (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, etc.), but Linklater makes movies about teenagers getting high in Austin and people sitting around and talking a lot. Suffice it to say, I was intrigued and, thus, read the book. Linklater's choice to use rotoscope technology as he had in "Waking Life" to animate over the actors' performances was ingenious. It allowed a near perfect translation of the drug-filled landscape of the story and one of its toughest set-pieces: the stealth suit used by cops to conceal their identity that constantly makes them look like different people.
While not the most rewatchable movie in the world, this still serves as a perfect complement to the novel (I actually picked up on a few things I had missed in the book), a cautionary tail for drug users, and an expose' of the often-times corrupt and politicized worlds of rehab and the "war" on drugs.
