In GATTACA, the character of Vincent Freeman (get it? get it?), a de-gene-rate (get it? get it?) whose inferior DNA guarantees lesser citizenship, is played by Ethan Hawke, who still resembles the cherubic Charlie from DEAD POET'S SOCIETY, but now with beautiful man-limbs and a swoon-inducing square-jawed intensity (thank goodness the be-stubbled James Dean-meets-River-Phoenix impression in REALITY BITES was just a dream). Who else for his potential mate but Uma Thurman -- she of the face that is a miracle of isolated inconsistencies tuned to surreal, mind-boggling elegance? Her Irene Cassini is a fellow colleague from Gattaca who also suffers from job-preventing health probelms, but that's all beside the point. Between the two of them they have cheekbones to cut steel, which is more than the rest of *us* degenerates, but heaven forbid they take a moment to savour. No. For Vincent and Irene literally want the stars too.

Vincent Freeman is an invalid (as in "not of suitable selection," and not literally an "invalid" as in "cripple," but don't you love those science-fiction metaphors?). He was conceived naturally instead of through test tube fertilization like his younger brother. Predicted to have a 99% probability of developing heart disease by age 30, to develop myopia, and having an 80% and above chance of attention deficit deficiency, Vincent enters into a life of career discrimination from birth. He is condemned to an underclass and prevented from high-ranking jobs because of his genetic flaws. His father sums up the possibility of his a chieving his one dream of becoming an astronaut: the only way he will see the inside of a spaceship is if he's cleaning it.

Flying as far away from earth is, however, is a dream Vincent Freeman pursues with singularity. He engages a man who helps him to swap identities with Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a genetic miracle of planning who has broken his spine in an accident and is now a depressed lush in need of cash. Jerome is bitter and wheelchair-bound -- a *real* invalid who is now willing to cash in on the potential of his enviable bio-engineering. They enter into an agreement that requires Jerome to deliver daily rations of his urine, blood, hair and skin bits to enable Vincent to fool his employers into thinking that he is Jerome, in return for Vincent's paying of the rent.

So that's the premise: Vincent, needy and fixated on proving himself, uses Jerome's genetic identity, a "borrowed ladder," to join the elite Gattaca Aerospace Lexicon, where his excellent performance eventually lands him the opportunity to fly to Titan, a prestigious, high-profile mission that, more importantly, is the fulfilment of Vincent's lifelong dream. When the director of the flight mission is suddenly brutally bludgeoned to death, however, the subsequent murder investigation threatens to reveal V incent's duplicity and shatter the opportunity that he has worked so hard for.

GATTACA is uneven in parts, but beautiful in design. Its main point is simple: Vincent, a defective faith-child, has the fiery nerviness and risk-taking gumption needed to overcome adversity that is clearly missing in his physically ideal but spiritually lacklustre foils Jerome and brother Anton. This point is made repeatedly in competitive sea-races with his brother (where he wins despite being physically weaker), and scenes that pointedly contrast the whiney and pessimistic Jerome (a perfect biological specimen that still wins silver instead of gold in a swim ming competition, who causes his own spinal injury through carelessness, yadda yadda yadda) with the almost naive confidence of Vincent.

Vincent's early child-to-adulthood is spent in an environment replete with 1950s interfaces, from furniture (attention is paid even to glass details) to clothes-and-hair to bookcovers explaining the life of an astronaut. The Gattaca offices and complex, o n the other hand, have the surreal, spartan lines, here exquisitely infused with blue, that typically characterize visual statements of the the-future-is-sterile variety. The homogeneity -- and idiocy --- of the privileged class comes across clearly: Vin cent gains access to Gattaca not because of interview performance but his blood test. When his identity as Vincent is flashed on the screens of all his colleagues, no one recognizes he (as Jerome) and Vincent are the same person because the message ident ifies the wanted Vincent as an "invalid." And despite their elite status, Vincent and the other flight navigators sit enclosed in a a common room of cubicles, typing endlessly on their screens. In a society that is so sophisticated it bases discriminatio n on the quality of DNA, individuals are faceless. High-tech discrimination is no different from the segregative criteria of today.

What is most enjoyable about GATTACA is its sustained refusal to use excessive spectacle (like in THE FIFTH ELEMENT, which was beautiful in a much different way, or ALIENS, which wasn't) in both its plot and aesthetics. Most scenes are composed with a po int in mind, like the extreme long shot that frames Irene and Vincent against the long, barren stretch of the exterior Gattaca complex. Plotwise, GATTACA sticks to its guns and fleshes out Vincent's determined struggle to achieve his dream rather than fo cusing on the violent murder that takes place at the beginning of the story.

Some reviews decry the distance between the Thurman and Hawke characters, but honestly, what else could Uma Thurman be? Thurman, goddess, she-deity of all things unreachable and delicious, is believable (though distant) as Irene, a colleague who learns t o trust her feelings rather than what she's told. Ethan Hawke is stellar as the dream-crazed Vincent who pushes boundaries and defies odds to get what he wants. If GATTACA suffers, it is from forgetting to develop logical relationships within its fiction al framework. In an advanced society that can map a person's entire life before he's born, and eliminate potential problems like baldness and cancer, how can they have forgotten to develop the expertise to cure these same ailments in people who are alrea dy living?

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