Soylent Green (1973)

Directed by: Richard Fleischer
Written by: Stanley R. Greenberg 
Starring: Chalton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young
Rated: PG

You are what you eat, they say. I suppose that trite little comment is taken a bit literally in "Soylent Green", the cult classic about over-population and the damaging effects of pollution on mankind. The year is 2022 and New York City is bursting with 40 million people, each trying to eek out an existence, not just a living. The city has taken on a yellowish hew from the pollutants in the air, rent money goes to pay for a section of a stairwell, and folks live off of vitamin enriched crackers called Soylent which are made from algae in the ocean.

Chalton Heston stars as Detective Thorn whose investigative work on the assassination of the ultra-rich William Simonson (Joseph Cotton) buries him in the secrets of the men who keep their wretched society from tearing itself apart. Along with his trusted companion, Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson in his last film role), Thorn discovers what tyranny really means to those who don't matter.

A sci-fi and a mystery, I'm not convinced that this film works properly as either. Let's start with the former:

I have stated many times in the past my theory of proper science fiction, and that is that a film in the genre only works if it takes one existing aspect of society, changes it, and then examines all possible repercussions of that alteration. Here we have a swelling of population, greenhouse gas emissions, corruption of the rich and powerful, Big Brother, and the twist ending which I won't reveal, just to name a few. Instead of examining one, it has instead chosen to use over-population as a justification to examine a whole slew of problems without fully analyzing any of them. That makes for a muddied mess.

For instance, Sol is a retired professor who is mainly in the film to flesh out the Thorn character and provide In the Good Ol' Days speeches. Towards the end of the movie he learns a horrible secret and elects to go to a government facility where he is euthanized for free, rather go on suffering in the world with his knowledge. That in itself is a film. When and how was such a policy implemented? How did the public respond? What system of government does the United States have in 2022 to allow such a measure to be taken? Etc, etc. The twist ending is hardly even revealed and the massive questions involved never examined, though theoretically that it what the movie is about.

Now the mystery. As a detective Thorn has to cut through layer after layer of both have-nots and have-alls in order to gain answers which he never really achieves. He makes no big discoveries, but instead puts himself into situation after situation in which we are reminded what a sad life everyone leads, boo hoo hoo. These people can afford a $250 jar of strawberries and I can't. Sob. Those people where handled harshly when the stock of Soylent Green ran out on Tuesday. Cry. And yet we the audience never get any answers. Lame. Oh but wait! We do get a nonsensical and completely irrelevant and obligatory subplot about a romance between Thorn and high end escort.

I will say that the film piqued my appetite, even if I left hungry. It was a competently made movie despite what I imagine was a rather small budget, and when I finished I thought to myself that a sequel or a remake of it could done and I wouldn't be upset in the slightest. I guess to me that means it has promise, I cared about the situation and wanted to know more about the world and the questions that were raised. I only wish that they had stuck to their guns and had quit fluffing up a story that needed exactly the opposite.

2/4