Feast on ‘Soylent Green’
“Soylent Green is good!” – Gex
I was 9 when I first heard that line spoken by the media-savvy title character in the PS1/Saturn/3DO game whenever he’d chow down on a power-up. Without nearly the knowledge of film as Gex, I didn’t have any idea what it meant. Now that I’m familiar with the picture, that reference is pretty funny (at least, I can imagine my kid self cracking up).
Much like with The Empire Strikes Back and The Sixth Sense, the culture at large has spoiled the complete hell out of Soylent Green, pretty much ensuring that no future audiences will be surprised by the plot twists and thus have ruined these films’ ability to retain their intended shocking effect (especially this one, where it’s saved for the very end). No longer packing the punch it once had, is the film still worth watching? Arrow Video sure hopes so, as they’ve now added this one to their Blu-ray and 4K catalogue.
It’s 2022 as predicted in 1972 and, let’s see: people having to wear face masks when outside, a lack of good healthy food, the global population is over 7 billion, rising temperatures, high unemployment, an increased need for riot control, polluted oceans, church shootings, stationary bicycles are popular, model-quality women play video games all day for men’s amusement, old people are the only ones who read anymore, a crooked Italian-American Governor of New York…yep, that all checks out. At least the actual 2020s don’t have women as “furniture,” so we as a species can take some comfort in knowing that we haven’t sunk to such a level of depravity yet.
Anyway, Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) is called in to investigate the murder of a wealthy man (Joseph Cotten) on the board of the Soylent Corporation, a major food manufacturer. Signs of a break-in are present, but the alarm systems down, the bodyguard (Chuck Connors) and furniture (Leigh Taylor-Young) were conveniently out running errands at night, and the fact that nothing was taken from the apartment all point to a targeted hit. Finding no evidence of any garden-variety wrongdoing (infidelity, embezzlement, etc.), Thorn deduces that this has to be related to his job at Soylent.
In the style of a Columbo movie, there are scenes with the non-police characters before the murder to confuse the viewer set up who will be involved in some way, with a few more scenes outside the detective’s POV after he’s started on the case. And also, as often done in Columbo, the crime is shown. The who and how are known to the audience; it’s the why that we’re to discover (though the exchange between victim and killer implies that the former has an idea).
As sci-fi police procedurals go, Soylent Green is a top example of the form. Its influence in this regard has definitely shown up in later works, film or otherwise (personally, I was reminded of Policenauts). Though the makers were concerned about the movie having too many moments that evoke an action picture, those segments are imaginative and very well executed. The ending is/would have been highly chilling; the film doesn’t treat the reason why as some big mystery, which makes/would have made it one of the best twists in cinema history (actually, scratch the “would have made”; it can still hold that distinction).
Completing his late-60s/early-70s sci-fi trifecta, Heston is solid here. Given the NYC setting, though,I kind of wish that Jerry Orbach was in this part so it’d really feel like a dystopian Law & Order/Criminal Intent (the latter show being the one that followed the Columbo model) episode. Brock Peters is a standout as Thorn’s commanding officer, a man torn between politics and justice. But the heart of the film is most certainly Edward G. Robinson. Playing an elderly ally of the detective, he has the most stirring and emotional scenes.
On the other hand, it’s not a whole lot like the book. Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison features some of the same characters (albeit not all named the same as they are in the film) and a murder investigation, but it plays out much differently. As the book title indicates, overpopulation was the major theme, and while that is present in the film, it’s treated as just another thing wrong with the world.
The extras include audio commentaries (one from director Richard Fleischer and Taylor-Young, the other from film historian Michael Brooke and author Johnny Mains), BFI interviews with Heston and Fleischer, footage from a tribute to Robinson for his 101st film, a promotional featurette, trailer, still images, and a booklet.
So to answer the question posed in the second paragraph, yes. Even if you know where you’ll end up, you’ll want to know and experience how you get there. Take a big bite into Soylent Green; just don’t look at the ingredients.
