“A Scanner Darkly” is based on short story by an author whose other tales have later become great movies such as “Blade Runner” and “Minority Report”. It is a weird movie with an interesting visual style as it was acted by real people but has an animated layer on top to create an almost-graphic novel effect.

In “A Scanner Darkly”, an undercover policeman codenamed ‘Fred’ (Keanu Reeves “The Matrix”, “Speed”) begins to lose his sanity, his perception of reality and his identity when investigating a new drug. It’s an interesting idea and the film has some good twists but unfortunately it feels so disjointed and just plain bizarre that ends up being more like “Heavy Metal” than “Total Recall” (another good film based on the same author’s short stories).

Keanu Reeves is good but the script doesn’t help him out as there are plenty of poor moments of dialog. His character has some real potential but never really reaches it. The characters that arguably ruin the film are the ones played by Robert Downey Jr. (“Iron Man”) and Woody Harrelson (“Zombieland”); they both play crazy drug-takers and they distract from the seriousness and grimness of the rest of the film by adding what seems to be a comedic edge but sadly they’re not even funny.

The biggest issue I had with this film is that it isn’t particularly clear about which side of the drug debate it is on because it shows the horrors of drug addiction but then makes those who try to stop drugs being brought into society like fascists. “A Scanner Darkly” has some intriguing ideas but it perhaps aims to be more artistic than it is capable of being; it’s making the fine arts speech without much knowledge on the subject so it of course improvises a lot of it.