Cannes, France — Richard Linklater gives a daring cinematic adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel about corporate/government surveillance of a public led around by their noses with drug addictions likewise fueled and fed by the “system.”
Given the novel’s scattershot method of dipping in and out of a reflexive reality occupied by a group of drug addicts, Linklater’s use of rotoscoping (see “Waking Life”) adds a veneer of narrative information that causes you to question further the character puzzles presented by the thickly layered story.
Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover Los Angeles narcotics cop who wears a “scramble suit” that disguises his identity behind an ever-shifting blend of hundreds of men and women.
Arctor has become an addict himself and is so far removed from his personal sense of identity that he puts what little faith he has that the all-seeing scanner will view him clearly rather than darkly.
Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder play fellow addicts in Bob Arctor’s dystopic milieu.
Rated R. 100 mins.
