Gattaca 

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Director: Anfrew Niccol
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law

High concept here we come: in the "not too distant future," humans are scanned for positive DNA, their careers based on their genetic disposition. Ethan Hawke, an "invalid" born with a heart condition that will keep him from travelling into space, uses a paralyzed man's "valid" identity to gain access to Gattaca, the future's doppleganger for a really mean-spirited NASA. It works for a while, but when the mission captain is murdered, Ethan leaves one of his eyelashes at the crime scene, and the hunt is on. The only person who can save him is Uma Thurman, a coworker at Gattaca who is her self a bit shy of a load in the genetic department.

This movie tries to do a lot of things, and succeeds on about half of them. Beginning with Ethan's rivalry with his brother, a baby born the "right" way with genetic engineering, it appeals to the kid-left-out-of-the-dodgeball-game who lies dormant in all of us. It's also a love story, but Uma spends half the movie with such weirdly correct posture that you wonder what kind of muscle relaxants were necessary off-set. The murder leads to a so-called "mystery," but the payoff there is dopey and unsatisfying.

Where "Gattaca" succeeds best is in its treatment of failed expectations in the face of perfection. The genetically pure folks in this movie become so obsessed with flaws that they become them; Ethan's roommate (Jude Law), the paralyzed "valid" whose identity he has borrowed, is a character study in failed potential. He's actually the best thing about this film—his heroic grope up the stairs, dragging his dead legs trying to get to the second floor in time for the police chief's visit, is heartbreakingly exciting.

The rest of the movie is all visuals, borrowing pages out of the Kubrick playbook, giving the synthetic surfaces and filtered sunlight an eerie sheen. The future of genetic engineering is bad, "Gattaca" seems to say; when you take out the flaws, you rob us of our humanity. Thanks, but I sorta knew that already.

—Ian Williams

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