Sorry, this movie sucks

Let's be realistic.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I'm going to tell you why I gave this movie a 9. I contemplated a 10, even though there are other superior science fiction films. Soylent Green hasn't aged well and its depicted technology was an anachronism for the year 2022. The book and the movie did not attempt to depict what technology could have been in the year 2022 because that wasn't the point of the movie. The movie was an environmental warning. I gave this movie a 9 because every pre-teen in America should be made to watch this movie. I believe watching Soylent Green makes a young person possibly more responsible for the environment and far more appreciative of the food his or her parents work so hard to put on the table. As a result of watching Soylent Green as a young teenager, I now appreciate all food served to me, whether by my mother, friends, or purchased. I could go to a friend's house and be served the toughest cow meat by the mother and I would relish it as if it were filet mignon. Soylent Green makes one appreciate the real, delicious food we take for granted in our lives. Everyone knows what Soylent Green is about. It's a national movie icon so I'm not giving away anything that nobody knows. Everyone knows without spoilers that the movie is about everyone having to eat mass-produced, synthesized food squares. Now I won't go further into the story. Other people have already done it. In this dystopian future, only the very wealthy can afford real food. Most Americans under age 35 have never eaten real meat. The scene where the local food grocer shows Shirl and her bodyguard a rare slice of raw, uncooked steak will make a lasting impression on your mind. You'll never forget it. You will become hungry watching this movie. You will come away from this movie as a nouveau-environmentalist. You will NOT waste food again. You will be less picky and less finicky about your food. You will be far more appreciative of the good fortune today to eat real food and meat everyday upon demand. In short, SOYLENT GREEN has the capability to make everyone who watches it a more responsible, more ethical citizen.

Set in an overpopulated future (2022, but it may as well be 2075), where the environment has been damaged to the point that farming cannot produce enough food. The Soylent corporation produces most of the foodstuffs in the form of colored biscuit-like squares made from soybeans and plankton. Detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is a NYC cop who investigates the death of a rich executive of the Soylent corporation. He determines that the murder was part of a cover up and begins to uncover the dark secrets behind their society.Heston gives a performance in line with the rest of career and Edward G. Robinson shines in his final appearance as he died shortly after filming wrapped. There are plenty of interesting social commentaries about the massive divide between the rich and poor. There is a reintroduction of indentured servitude in this society as prostitutes come with apartments and are considered a part of the "furniture" for the wealthy. When pushed against obstacles like overpopulation and food shortages, society backslides and a few use force to dominate the masses.The ending felt rushed, unnecessarily so, given the film's relatively short 96 minute runtime. The first hour was engaging and interesting, but the last 20 minutes was a rush to get to the revelation. Thorn also goes searching for evidence of the wrongdoing, but doesn't actually bring back any besides seeing it for himself. At that point it is just his word against their's and they have shown no hesitation to kill to protect their power.

While we are constantly bombarded with the terms "climate change" and "global warming" today from numerous media sources, rarely do we hear about one of the primary causes of these conditions, which is the explosion of the world's population, primarily on much of the Asian and African continents. Apparently, it is politically incorrect nowadays to mention uncontrollable, unsustainable population growth in these places because rarely is it ever mentioned as a direct contributor to environmental disaster. Although the setting of this apocalyptic movie is New York, and we know very well that the population of the Big Apple won't reach anywhere near 40 million in five years (2022), the population of many cities in Asia and Africa have in fact increased by five-fold since this film was produced in 1973. They include Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Beijing, and Shanghai in China, Bangalore and Delhi in India, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Karachi in Pakistan, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Lagos in Nigeria. I'm sure that there are many other cities that can be added to this list. While the population crisis presented by this film clearly did not occur in New York, it did in fact take place in many other cities over the past 44 years, and that is very critical to the movie's fundamental message, which maintains its vital significance today.The opening montage of still photos, first in black and white before shifting to more recent color, that depicts the world's environmental degradation during the past century is very powerful and very sobering. Any fan of Edward G. Robinson, and I am one of those, should have been deeply moved by his spectacular, symphonic farewell to us in the euthanasia facility only days before he passed away in real life.Considering all of the recent revelations about the debasement and humiliation of women throughout Hollywood history, I found the reference to young, abused women here as inanimate "furniture" to be true to life in a distinctly Hollywood kind of way. After all, who knows more about the "furniture" of Hollywood studios than Hollywood itself? There's an interior decorator on every corner.Just go easy on those odd, green crackers before you completely lose your appetite and hope to God that we never live to see this work of fiction become reality. Bon appetite!

In seeing 'Soylent Green' in 2017, we are struck how immediate and contemporary it is. We are living in a time that takes history and facts in a less detached way manner than we did in the past: objectivity has, it seems, no virtue,no relevance. Harry Harrison's dystopian novel 'Make Room! Make Room! became the film 'Soylent Green', under the skillful hand of director Richard Fleischer. The film's appropriate to our times; it speaks to our condition; its themes are associated with today's moral and social and political issues. 'Soylent Green' reveals in a futuristic New York, the consequences of global warming, that America's coupon clippers deny. The film released in 1974 talks of the 'greenhouse effect', a term that has slipped out of public consciousness, yet vividly represented by Fleischer as a world of excessive temperatures, over populated, with insufficient housing, a world of the poor and hungry who live cheek to jowl even in stairwells; churches have become warehouses for the homeless and the huddled masses. The rising temperatures have rendered the earth sterile so that food production cannot sustain life, and a corporation of the rich find ways to feed the 99 percent with something called 'soylent yellow, brown and now green'. 'Soylent Green' is a morality tale; it has definite lessons for our ruling corporate classes if they would only drop the scales from this eyes, and cleans the encrusted wax in their ears. We are in a world where the 1 percent, live in luxury and the 99 percent in despair. The film has, obviously, a bearing on the way our elite make decisions only for their bottom line. Slaves exist; they are called furniture; no longer human, they serve for sexual pleasure, and can be discarded at will like an old lamp or chair that no longer serves its purposes. The film's conceit has an echo from the 18 century: Dean Jonathan Swift says it all in 'A Modest Proposal'. 'Soylent Green's' universe is one that believes in waste not want not and all that hoary dictum entails. The film follows the tried and true hard-boiled detective genre with its twists and turns; its corrupt practices, its tail of dead,its false leads and chases, the heavy hand of the powerful to quash the hero Thron played with clenched jaws (Charlton Heston's trade mark) from getting at the truth. He is ably supported by Sol Roth (played by Edward G. Robinson, in his last film role) with a turn that enables Thorn or Heston to find his way. Chuck Connors is a cool killer at the beckon and call of the corporate powers that rule this claustrophobic world. Black actors play secondary but important roles, which says something for the casting of those days when Nixon's Southern Strategy was in full swing.'Soylent Green' is a film that deserves to be review and shown in schools, on television regularly. It has cautionary lessons for us that we should learn, yet the Trump White House and his billionaire cronies are pushing our planet to the hour when life on Earth will look like the ambiance of suffering and torment of the mass of people while the sybaritic holders of power make merry and money and enjoy the fruits of power as the world goes to hell in a hand basket.