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Gattaca
directed by Andrew M. Niccol

At times, a movie comes along that impresses you by treating the audience as intelligent, thinking beings that want to be involved in the story and willing to see what happens to the characters. Gattaca is one such movie. Despite having sets and special effects that are nothing to shout about, this movie packs more punch in it than any other science fiction movie I've seen in the past few months with the exception of Contact.

The premise of the story is interesting enough by itself: imagine a future where genetic testing has been perfected to the point where your very future is genetically determined. With just a blood test or a urine sample, the odds of you getting various genetic or inherited diseases are known and you are marked for life (why 'waste money' hiring a guy who may have a 90 percent of getting a heart disease when there are healthier people around?)

The story revolves around Vincent (Ethan Hawke), an "invalid" who was conceived 'out of love' and consequently has 'defects' like a heart condition, poor eyesight, etc. He desperately wants to escape this world by getting on a space ship. But his genetic 'defects' mark him and the only job he can get is a janitor at a corporation named Gattaca, which launches rocket ships. Despite this, he studies hard and could get in on merit along - if merit was the only thing required.

So, Vincent decides to cheat. He gets in touch with a "valid" person (conceived in a test tube with defective genes corrected) named Jerome (Jude Law) who, due to an accident, is crippled. They work out a deal where Vincent takes on Jerome's identity and, in a fascinating starting sequence to the movie, shows how he does it; by shaving and scraping his body to remove as much loose and dead skin and then bringing along Jerome's urine, hair, skin and blood to use to fool various genetic sampling systems.

Then, on the verge of going off into space, a disaster happens. One of the directors of the flight is murdered and the investigators find an invalid's DNA at the scene of the crime. In the constant battle between hiding his real identity and the police, he encounters his valid brother (whom he left many years ago) and their simmering rivalry over their different genetic heritage re-emerges.

The impressive thing about this movie is that it hangs together quite well. The underground selling of a crippled valid's identity is one consequence of having only genetic testing as a criteria. The many false leads the police get are a consequence of relying only on genetic testing to catch the criminal.

In the end, the purpose of the movie is to show one possible consequence if society decides to 'leave it all to gene testing' instead of taking into account other possible ways of testing people. It is also a movie about how a man overcame the odds of an artificial disadvantage; of 'owning' the wrong kind of genes.

A must watch movie which will make you think long after you've left the theater.

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Gattaca directed by Andrew M. Niccol

Gattaca
directed by Andrew M. Niccol