Based on the Philip K. Dick novel, this is your average drug-abuse drama, albeit told in the intriguingly heightened visual style of rotoscoping (the same one writer-director Richard Linklater employed in his philosophical talk-fest Waking Life). Filmed in live action, the images are then painted over by computer for a fluid, dreamlike feel. It’s an apt visual approach for Scanner, in which a narc (Keanu Reeves) infiltrates a ramshackle group of users (including Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder). As his investigation deepens, he loses his grip on which of his identities is the real one – an existential crisis nicely mirrored by the animation.
