Movies From Austin (Part 3 of 4) - Soylent Green

This is probably the only movie I had a hard time enjoying thanks in part to the many spoilers I was told about by the film students in my school. Then again, the only real spoiler is the ending.

Set in the year 2022, the planet Earth is pretty much left for dead. There are too many people, too much Global Warming, and not enough food for everyone. Those that can afford fresh food and water are the very rich and powerful. The poor are left with a product known as Soylent, each in a different color given their use. Some are used as energy, others as food substitutes. The most popular and highest in demand of the Soylents is Soylent Green. It is so widely wanted that if a supply should run out, riots happen. And apparently in this future, riots are contained and controlled by bull-dozer-like trucks known as "The Scoops," where unrulely citizens are lifted and then dumped into the truck never to be seen or heard from again. And most offending of all? Women are called "furniture" and are treated as such.

Kind of a bleak outlook on the future from the 1970's, huh?

What I found fascinating is how accurate some of the props from the future was. Notepads in the movie look similar to our modern PDAs and Blackberries. The Emergency Phone boxes that are used in the movie feature phones that look like the cell phones from several years ago. Not the bulky kind that is usually used to mock the invention when it first came out, but kind small enough to hide in your hand for the most part.

Ironically, they have an Atari cabinet in the movie, which one character calls a new toy. New to her, yes, but by our standards today, that item is a collectible. Probably something you wouldn't want to play as intensely as she was.

Plot wise, it starts off like a decent detective film. Some big shot got murdered and Charlton Heston's character is in charge of solving the case. When he gets too close, the rich people that pretty much control the world try to shut the case. While a solid plot in every respect, the tangents that they show have no purpose other than to flesh out the characters and give you a better sense of what the state of society is like in that particular future.

Overall, I don't know what to say about this movie. It has some nice social commentary that is relevant even now about the state of the economy, where the rich get pretty much everything and the poor are treated like fodder. It even has some implications to how women are still being treated today. But as far as being entertaining goes? I can't really say, mostly because the ending was spoiled for me. And when it actually did end, it didn't feel like the story really ended.

Oh well, gotta stumble upon bad movies once in a while, right?