Soylent Green

Though the mystery has been spoiled somewhat by an over-revealed twist ending, Soylent Green still succeeds thanks to director Richard Fleischer's sure command of one of the grimmest and most sadly plausible dystopias put to film.

Conjures up a terrifying vision of the future that is made all the more urgent by today's inflationary food prices and fast approaching energy crisis.

The overall tone is one of melancholy rather than sci-fi wonder, and the film's cynicism is hard to shake.

A good, solid science-fiction movie, and a little more.

The film strikes a poignant chord with its chilling portrayal of a state-sponsored euthanasia program that utilizes movie-watching as a narcotic designed to help the sick and elderly die peacefully.

Uneven and slightly muddled futuristic horror story—not really science fiction, more like an antipollution PSA gone berserk.

Unfortunately, the script, direction and the principals involved in this struggle for survival often are as synthetic as Soylent Green.

In the far-off year 2022, pollution and overpopulation have relegated most of the planet’s population to the streets. There, in teeming piles, they await the next delivery of clean water and highly processed food products. The projection is that New York City alone houses some forty million people, and we see evidence around every corner. Police detective Thorn (Charlton Heston), fortunate enough to afford a tiny, one-room apartment amidst such squalor, literally trips over the homeless as he navigates the lobby staircase each morning. His latest job whisks him to the environs of the über-wealthy, whose spacious, luxurious furnished quarters include video game consoles and conveyable live-in concubines. There to investigate a high profile murder, he happily samples such forbidden fruits and entrenches himself on the wrong side of powerful people with dark secrets. Although its climactic reveal has been spoiled by half a century of references and punchlines, the actual context of Soylent Green is still, mostly, apt. Shot in the early '70s, but inspired by a mid '60s science fiction novel, it’s very much an of-its-time depiction of a bleak and hopeless future. The metaphorical slope wasn’t quite slippery enough to get the real world to this point, fortunately, but it’s easy to understand the older generation’s concerns... mostly because we still share many of them. These big ideas are realized quite effectively on the big screen, and they’re the primary reason to tune in. The murder plot and corporate cover-ups, marred by Heston’s excessive histrionics, haven’t aged half as well.

This was kinda funny. Only because of the outdated style. This is not a fast paced film. There are some exciting action sequences like in the factory at the end but nothing hugely amazing. The twist at the end is so predictable that it is laughable. They make so much big deal about the twist you would never guess and I guessed it without looking at the film itself - you just need to know that there is a twist and food to realise what is going on. Having said that I found the campy entertainment funny.