Linklater’s attempt to literally fracture the perspective of A Scanner Darkly is ultimately wasted because nearly all of the time the rotosoing is done accurately enough to depict the leads in near fine detail. I understand not wanting to have Keanu Reeves in a film and be unable to utilise his star power but it boils down what’s clearly positioned to be reasoned introspection as mugging and in the case of Robert Downey Jr flailing at the camera while the animation hovers lines on their forms and occasionally throws in extra background detailing. The haziness and fluttering perspective that this vision for the film allows is then hindered by how overbearing many of the characters are; instead of moving in and out of spectral loneliness with Kanu’s lead the secondary characters end up getting most of the meat of the script, which is great in the case of Rory Cochrane’s Burroughs-esque Charles who struggles to conform to any kind of reality and terrible in the case of Robert Downy Jr’s James who’s basically pantomiming a junkie in as boisterous as he can manage. There’s a little insight in to the condition nonetheless, and while most of the conscious analysis of drug use is caught up in the excesses of performance the way that the characters drift in and out of temperance with their drugs and the situations their usage gets them in is handled with openness and no judgement.