Gattaca
Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin and Jude Law star in this engrossing sci-fi thriller about an all-too-human man who dares to defy a system obsessed with genetic perfection. Hawke stars as Vincent, an "In-Valid" who…
Source: YouTube Movies
About the Movie
In the “not-too-distant future,” society is sorted by DNA. Children conceived naturally are “In-Valids,” condemned by their genetic profile to menial lives; the engineered elite inherit everything else. Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), an In-Valid with a heart condition and a predicted death at thirty, dreams of space — and buys his way in, assuming the identity of Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a genetically perfect man crippled in an accident, who supplies the blood, urine, and samples Vincent needs to pass daily genetic screening at the Gattaca space corporation.
Days before the launch that is the fulfillment of his entire stolen life, a mission director is murdered, and an investigator (Alan Arkin) finds one of Vincent’s real eyelashes at the scene. As detective and fraud close in from both sides — and a romance with a colleague (Uma Thurman) threatens his cover — Vincent’s margin becomes a single heartbeat.
Why This Movie Matters to Sci-Fi
Gattaca is widely considered the finest film ever made about genetic discrimination, and it grows more relevant every year as prenatal screening, consumer DNA testing, and genetic data become ordinary facts of life. Released the year Dolly the sheep was cloned, it asked — calmly, elegantly, without a single laser battle — whether a civilization that can read a person’s future in their blood will leave any room for the human spirit to overrule it. Its retro-futurist design and Michael Nyman score made it a cult touchstone, and NASA personnel themselves once voted it among the most plausible science-fiction films ever made.
