Release Date:
03/11/2008
Despite its unfortunate title, Gattaca is one of those genius sci-fi movies that has continued to build momentum ever since it was released 11 years ago. It takes place in the "not-too-distant-future" (even though it must be more distant than anticipated, since it came out in 1997) and genetic engineering is all the rage. Ethan Hawke is a natural birth whose weak genetics condemn him to a life of menial labor. But his dreams to go into space outweigh his fate, so he works his ass, and dead skin, off to deceive the system and blend in with the supposed perfectly created humans. Props go to Jude Law, who is great as the superior and snotty crippled athlete who lends Hawke his identity. It's cheesy at timesthough it could have been worse judging by the deleted scenes, the lamest focusing on Ernest Borgnineand sometimes goes out of its way to deliver a message regarding natural versus modified. But it's Minority Report smart and still feels and looks like it could happen tomorrow.