By Geno McGahee
It’s the future from the perspective of the 1970s, which was an awesome decade for film. Charlton Heston was the man at this time. He had a huge hit with the 1968 film PLANET OF THE APES, THE OMEGA MAN in 1971, and followed that up with the 1973 film SOYLENT GREEN, a film that is another often quoted film.
Heston plays Detective Thorn and has one hell of an ascot. It’s sort of funny that he was such a sex symbol while wearing an ascot and strange hat, but I’m no hater. Good for him!
Thorn lives with his friend, an old man that used to be a professor, Sol (Edward G. Robinson), and they live a tough life. The entire population is dealing with a destroyed world. Nothing can grow and all resources are scarce. The Soylent company distributes a food they produced that feeds the majority of the population and have just released Soylent Green, a new food product.
William Simonson (Joseph Cotten) is a rich man with a secret. He is taken out in his apartment and Thorn is on the case. Despite the police department wanting desperately to rule it a robbery gone bad, Thorn sees it differently. He believes that it’s an assassination and he won’t rest until he finds out what’s going on. He also meets Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), a very attractive woman that came with the apartment. She lives the life but has to please whatever rich guy that puts her up. She immediately hits it off with Thorn. It must be the ascot.
The more that Thorn digs into the case, the more that he’s finding problems and the more people die, but at least he’s having fun with Shirl and enjoying everything that the apartment has to offer. Damn, Heston gets the hottest chicks in the world in his films. He gets Taylor-Young here and he gets Linda Harrison in PLANET OF THE APES.
In this terrible world, old people are put down at a certain age and that falls upon poor Sol, but not before he informs Thorn of some information that he’s uncovered. It is the information that has gotten many people killed and now Thorn has it and has to run with it and in a Heston movie, the courageous hero is Heston and nobody’s going to snuff his ass. He’s going to figure shit out and get things done. Things really get awesome when Thorn goes to investigate the Soylent factory and finds out their terrible secret.
SOYLENT GREEN is a great film with a tremendous ending. Heston is tied to two of the greatest endings in the history of film. They don’t make films like this anymore. The 1970s had it right and this film is done so well and gets more interesting as every minute passes leading to a great conclusion that has been quoted since its release. I can’t recommend it enough.
