Gattaca (Full Screen & Widescreen)

Occasionally one of the haves has an accident. Then it is possible to assume that person's identity armed with genetic traces, blood and urine samples and some creative surgery. Thus armed he is able to enter Gattaca (the organization responsible for space flight) where he wins a position on the mission to Titan. But there is a hitch; a murder. During the investigative sweep one of his eyelashes is found and the search begins in earnest.

Most of the rest of the movie is involved with trying to maintain identity long enough to manage take off. Complicating matters are a Columbo-style detective (Alan Arkin), a love interest (Uma Thurman) and his brother from his old life. In the end it comes down to a simple idea. Many of the haves know a have-not (be it a child, sibling or whatever) who they have had to abandon and our hero represents the one ray of hope that these people can have. So just as he is discovered, the discoverers each have a reason to not turn him in and he begins the mission to Titan.

Gattaca, with its heavy detective cat-and-mouse, could be the successor to Alfred Bester's THE DEMOLISHED MAN. This was a very well made film with a good story, characters, acting and pacing. There were excellent performances from many of the cast including author Gore Vidal. If you like your films with a bit of thought then this is one you should look out for.

To start with what is particularly good about Gattaca, the sets are striking. They create a 'futuristic' aura very successfully, so much so that they they actually forced my attention on to what I believe to be one aspect of the film's main weakness, namely the plot or plots - Vincent's basic dilemma does not require a future setting at all. If he had been a weakling trying to get into a career in, say, sport or the armed services in 2004 that would have dealt with the issue just as well. The other thing that is distinctly good, in a certain kind of way, is the acting. When Gore Vidal, of all people, makes an early entrance in the role of Director, I reflected momentarily that I had never seen him acting before. In an instant I had corrected myself - I have never seen Vidal not acting. He acts a persona of his own creating whenever he appears on the media, and it is no surprise that he carries off his film role so convincingly. The Director is a far simpler personality that the real-life Gore Vidal. The three main roles are taken by Ethan Hawke as Vincent, Jude Law as the crippled but genetically perfect Jerome, and Uma Thurman as Irene. Like the Director, the characters are schematic and line-drawn, and such as they are they are very well done. The trouble, I hate to say, is the plotting.

Not only is the basic setting not really required, the theme of Vincent's physical frailty actually has nothing to do with the ethical question of designer-vs-natural conception either. These threads are separate strands thrown into a single bag, so to speak, but not woven together. In much the same way the murder investigation, which threatens to blow Vincent's cover and reveal his clever DNA exchange with Jerome, is very loosely integrated with the main action - anything of that kind would have taken only the smallest mischance to come to light, and the efforts of the investigators make the quest for certain weapons in Iraq even as I write look a model of competence. It all left me not even needing to make a willing supension of disbelief at how an impoverished janitor obtained the funds first to pay the rapacious clandestine transgenetics operator and second to pay his way though the Gattaca induction programme. To cap it all, there is a further sub-plot of sibling rivalry between Vincent and his eugenic younger brother Anton, which must be important, I have to assume, as one of their periodic swimming contests takes place at the climactic stage of the story. And of course there is a love-theme as well, in case the film ran out of themes.

I suppose this could hardly be called a rave-notice, and I fully admit that the film at least held my attention. It is not a bad film by any means, but the nearer in time to us that such an action is supposed to take place the harder it is to keep one's normal rational faculties switched off.