I want to start out by saying that this film is truly awesome. Went to see it last night, all Cineworld Gestapo’d up, ready for anything and I was utterly BLOWN AWAY! Myself and my mate were the only averagely intelligent people in the cinema, as everybody else around us up were overly intellectual A-holes!! you know? the ’strokey beard’ types that wouldn’t laugh at the clearly amusing and very, very dark humoured moments of madness, paranoia and general drug addicted behaviour that the characters were exuding out of the screen. (The whole scene of trying to go on a road trip to San Diego is a prime example of this and contains my favourite line from RObert Downey Jnrs character James Barris shouting, “What in the hell of a hootenany was that?!”) It had me rolling in the aisles.
The general plot of the film is that seven years from now there is a drug on the streets of our cities named ‘D’, aka ‘Death’, it is highly addictive (quel suprise!) and causes the two hemespheres of ones brain to compete for supremacy! Making ones waking life very colourful and hallucinogenic. Fun times ahoy!!
Bob Arctor (Reeves) is a cop working deep under cover to infiltrate and get ‘D’ off the streets, but due to this becomes an addict himself. He lives in a house with his two mates, James Barris (Junior) and Ernie Luckman (Harrelson) and occasionally his girlfriend and utter coke addict Donna Hawthorne (Ryder) comes round and joins in the paranoid antics and weirdness that is their household. (The 18 gear bike incident is amazing!)
The movie is well cast (due to the majority of actors having or had struggles with drugs in their off-screen lives) and the fact that it is shot with an everyday camera, but animated in such a way that brings a dizzingly, confusing existence to the screen that helps you relate to what the characters are going through, being thoroughly addicted to ‘D’.
I was totally sucked in by it, if not left a little burned at the end….but I still have to give it 5 outta 5. I think I may go out and read the book now by Philip K. Dick. If anyone has it in our little band, could you lend it to me?
Check out trailers and general chit-chat at http://wip.warnerbros.com/ascannerdarkly/