"Gattaca" is a curious hybrid, with a story that encapsulates its
theme in every movement, in the densest sense of Hollywood
classicism, yet it is captured in the amber of a look as glassy and
monumental as contemporary European art movies. Ethan Hawke is an
outsider in a world a couple of centuries hence, a natural birth in a
world of genetically engineered children. Vincent Freeman. Even the
ironic name of this man -- Freeman -- who must fake his identity
through complicated borrowings of another man's blood, DNA, urine,
belongs in a world that is cool in two respects. First is writer-
director Andrew Niccol's rigidly formal, deliciously piss-elegant
direction is as determinist as the possible world he suggests; then
expressive artifacts -- clothing, cars, houses, monuments -- belong
in glossy magazines (such as wallpaper*) that celebrate the
industrial designer as the great artist of the twentieth century. The
future of "Gattaca" is as cold-blooded as the lobby of an expensive
hotel or an airline terminal, or their breathless, transient
populations.

By law, Freeman is among those left to the menial work. Society's
elite are those who are the most genetically refined, but Freeman
nurtures a dream to become an aerospace engineer for the Gattaca
Corporation. Yet complications erupt in the final weeks before he can
finally blast off a planet that has tried to dampen the unpredictable
parts of human spirit. A romance with Uma Thurman follows, as well as
a murder and an investigation by Alan Arkin, overseen by the
patrician and plummy Gore Vidal as the team leader, wittily shown as
the apotheosis of genetic perfection.

Some have rejected "Gattaca" out of hand as ponderous, suffocating
artiness, but there are few themes where this burnished, serenely
confident style could be more appropriate.

Mason Gamble plays young Vincent.