Soylent Green

I never understood how Charlton Heston could look so much like David Letterman yet get all these roles as a dashing leading man. His role in Soylent Green is unusually more adapted to his predatory look and his IRL personality, however; he plays a remorseless, anti-hero cop in a bleak dystopian future where overpopulation and global warming have destroyed almost all productive farmland and the population lives almost entirely off of synthetic foods from the Soylent corporation. Of course, the titular Soylent Green is the hot new product that's even more nutritious and delicious than any previous offerings, but as decades of comedians picking on Heston's hammy acting have spoiled, there's something not quite right about how it's made.



Heston in this movie is basically the man every basement-dwelling Anon/b-tard/internet addict wishes they could be - as a matter of routine course in his investigations he loots the apartments of victims for swag and alcohol, he casually expects sex as part of his job description from live-in prostitutes called "furniture" (and gets it), he steps on legions of hobos on his way to work, he punches people, he smacks women around, he uses poor people in a crowd as bullet shields, etc. The only things even partially humanizing him from this "callous badass" treatment are his friendship with his longtime partner Sol (amazingly, played by an aged Edward G. Robinson - you'd never guess if you hadn't seen him in any of his other later roles) and a rather ill-executed budding romance with the "furniture" attached to the estate of the dead Soylent executive whose murder opens the movie.

The main issues that the movie addresses - overpopulation, the destruction of viable farmland and global warming - are still as relevant as they were in 1973. Unfortunately, like most dystopian flicks, the potential impact of the commentary is pretty much ruined by cheesy Hollywood bullshit and a ludicrous scenario that stretches believability beyond the breaking point, so what you really end up remembering about the movie is the lulz. Like "The Scoops" coming to disperse a rowdy crowd of homeless rioting over food shortages, and Heston's toothy over-acting. Phillip Dick it ain't.

Still not a bad movie though - like They Live, if you take it as a romp rather than something supposed to be seriously invested with Deeper Meaning, it can be enjoyable.



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Hay guys I herd Soylent Green is made of vagina