Soylent Green

Soylent Green (1973)
Director: Richard Fleischer
Cast: Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Brock Peters, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Conners, Joseph Cotton
Memorable: "There was a world, once, you punk."

We've all experienced it -- you have a favorite movie from your childhood and then see it years later and it doesn't hold up to the test of time. Well, this isn't one of those movies. My dim recollections of the movie were that it wasn't that good, but in fact, this movie is much better than I remembered.

It's 2023 and the world is hopelessly over populated. Food is a scarce commodity. Every inch of living space is precious. All resources are at their breaking point. Even a hot shower is a rarity. Heston plays police detective Robert Thorn trying find out who killed one of the rare wealthy individuals (Cotton). It looks like a robbery and murder, but Thorn sees through the obvious and thinks there so much more. He also plays the case to get close to what the rich man had -- good food, hot water and his woman (Taylor-Young). Assisting Thorn in his investigation if a former professor turned police researcher, Sol (Robinson). The relationship between Thorn and Sol is one that is close to father and son and one that Thorn holds dear. The deeper Thorn goes in his investigation, the more he puts himself in danger and the closer he comes to uncovering something devastatingly sinister.

Director Fleischer creates a world in which we feel the closed-in quarters, the squalor and the desperation. Heston plays against type and actually pulls off making his character seems seedy and corrupt, yet we still sense a moral center beneath the sardonic exterior. When I recalled the scenes with Edward G. Robinson, I remembered them as somewhat maudlin, but they come off as authentic and this is a credit to both Heston and Robinson.

This movie provides us with a dystopian view of the future and one that is quite bleak. I just hope it's not prophetic.

Yes, some of the production values don't hold up against today's CGI driven world, and I wouldn't be surprised if this movie were remade sometime soon, but this Soylent Green is a movie worth your attention.