Soylent Green
Is it possible for an ending to completely elevate an otherwise mediocre film? The final leg of “Soylent Green” is so impactful and memorable that it feels like the only thing anyone knows from this 1973 science fiction thriller. Having seen the Richard Fleischer film for the first time now, it’s basically the only part worth remembering. This is a movie where the ideas are more intriguing than the execution.
The year is 2022. New York City has a population of 40,000,000 people. The environment is in shambles due to greenhouse gasses and pollution- a green smog covers the city. There are shortages of food, water and housing. The food of necessity for much of the population, which is living in overcrowded apartment buildings and with sparse financial resources, is a processed food known as Soylent Green (the latest iteration), which is supposedly derived from plankton. One day, a member of the Soylent Corporation’s board, William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotton), is found murdered. On the case is Detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston), who lives in an apartment with co-worker and former police researcher Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson). While investigating the murder, Thorn finds a couple of volumes of an Oceanic survey Soylent had done several years ago. What Sol Roth finds could upend society to its core.
“Soylent Green” is based on the novel, Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. Harrison’s novel is probably an example of “hard sci-fi,” but as adapted by Stanley R. Greenberg and Fleischer (“Conan the Destroyer,” “Fantastic Voyage” and many more), it doesn’t elevate to the same level of seriousness as other films made around the same time, including some of the subsequently goofy “Planet of the Apes” sequels. Part of the problem is Heston as Thorn. Yes, he brings his iconography to the role, but there isn’t a lot of gravity to him as a performer; we’re always anticipating him to have a huge outburst of emotion that borders on parody of Taylor in the OG “Planet of the Apes.” He’s fine, and the final reveals are wonderfully aided by his over-the-top nature as a performer, but the few scenes we get of Cotton as Simonson, and especially Robinson as Sol Roth, bring more weight to the film than anything Heston delivers. No doubt, due to the rising anxieties about the environment and overpopulation at the time, “Soylent Green” was topical, but for a film that feels intended to be bleak science fiction, it is deeply silly. All that being said, however, that ending does leave a mark. But it can’t elevate the film beyond just being fine science fiction cinema; if anything, it reveals the limitations of the entire film all the more.
