Gattaca (DVD)

This film, largely the project of one man, writer and director Andrew Niccol, is a slow-paced but enthralling story exploring a very plausible near future. Vincent, our hero, is one of the tiny minority of children born in this era not genetically modified in any way. He was conceived "traditionally", in a not unattractive car, and born without any natural susceptibilities removed. His brother Anton, customised by a local geneticist, was deemed worthy of his father's name and always performed better than Vincent. But, like the heroes of so many human-interest stories, Vincent had a dream. This dream and the determination to overcome his society's ...  Read the complete review

note: also appears in part on Flixster and The Student Room Genetic engineering remains a very controversial subject a decade on from Andrew Niccol's clever and original Gattaca, and impressively, the film is renowned for a degree of prescience in predicting the extent to which the notion of "designer babies" would actively be discussed. Nowadays, newspapers regularly talk about it, but with Gattaca, it was something of an incendiary revelation. The plot revolves around Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), a young man born with a heart defect who wants to be an astronaut, but is excluded due to genetic discrimination, which basically determines ...  Read the complete review

Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction film, written and directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. In an unspecified period in the future, thanks to better DNA profiling, couples are able to ensure that their children are genetically superior to those born via traditional means. This results in discrimination against "in-valids" who are born naturally, which means they are given menial tasks whilst the "valid" get all the higher profile jobs. Vincent Freeman (Hawke) is one such in-valid, who battles with myopia and heart disease. He dreams of becoming an astronaut but due to the genetic prejudice against him ...  Read the complete review

As I became a fan of Andrew Niccol's work after watching The Trueman Show, I was really looking forward to watching this and I wasn't disappointed. Set in a "not too distant future" where parents can genetically configure their children down to the last detail prior to birth which has resulted in DNA being the determining feature of a persons social class. The film stars Ethan Hawke as Vincent Freeman, a troubled member of the social underclass struggling against discrimination in his dream to become an astronaut. As the main character, through his narration we learn of his troubled past and how he instilled in himself his sense of ...  Read the complete review

Gattaca is one of my all time favourite sci-fi movies. I am not a huge fan of the genre, I must admit, in fact my reason for being such a big fan of this movie is because it relies so little on the genre for its story to be told. I am not interested in writing a review that simply copies information from the IMDB, or that simply tells the plot. I want to review the themes in the movie, to let you know what my take on it was. In that respect then, as I have said, one of the best things about this movie is that it is not your usual sci-fi film. It is so much more than that, whilst being less than sci-fi. The crux of the movie hinges on a sci-fi ...  Read the complete review