In Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, Keanu Reeves dons a hologram suit to unravel the secrets of a debilitating drug ring. Like any Linklater film worth watching, this Phillip K. Dick adaptation features talking...lots and lots of talking.

Bob Sabiston's trippy rotoscope visuals improve upon the pair's Waking Life work and disjoints the clear linkage between this film and the director's Before Sun* series, yet the unmistakable pitch of Linklater's cerebral pieces (Tape, Waking Life, Before Sunrise and Sunset) subdues whatever else may hold sway. Science fiction drug polemic avant anime' agitprop; no catchphrase supercedes the humanity Linklater arrives at via the play between his characters. Keanu Reeves is perfect as a man hiding behind a suit behind a man behind an addiction, and Winona Ryder would do well to go in with misters Linklater and Sabiston again: her performance here is completely committed (and on further reflection, the most keen of the film). And no matter how gorgeous a plane Mr. Sabiston’s visuals ascend to during Scanner's running time, the melancholy of Mr. Dick's pre-apocalyptic So Cal unceasingly carries the film.

The only thing deficient about A Scanner Darkly is its lack of the extraordinary. Trumped on Mr. Sabiston's dreamy roto-pallete (whose best work is still he and Jorgen Leth's expressionist Obstruction 4: The Perfect Human Cartoon) and a heavy dose of counter-culture verve, the film tells a decidedly flat narrative. The pace is a drawl and the revelations tremulous. How fitting then that Mr. Dick's epilogue -- an echo of Mr. Reaves last words spoken to no one, escaping himself even as he speaks them -- be the most affecting moment of Linklater's subdued, noble adaptation.