Are you sure you want to eat that little green tile?
As soon as my good friend Rufus described to me the plot and that it was made in the 1970's, I knew I would like it.In a bleak,over populated New York in 2022, Chartlon Heston stars as a homicide detective who,with the help of his old companion (Edward G Robinson in his last film) discovers the dark secret behind the popular Soylent Green food substitute that has a grip on the swelling population.
The director Richard Fleischer, with the aid of inventive set design and crude but lovable special effects, paints a rather bleak but somewhat not inaccurate picture of the near future which I totally bought into as I watched on. In every scene the actors are clammy with sweat due to the global warming, with the exception of the 'furniture'-idealistic young women who escort the millionaires and float around in their apartments who enjoy the spoils of money. The whole film has that atmosphere can be detected in other 70's classics such as All The Presidents Men, Marathon Man and The French Connection,that grainy,earthy paranoid thriller atmosphere which I simply cannot get enough of. Heston is convincing as always a detective who ends up going deeper and deeper into the seedy underbelly hidden behind the exterior of bureaucracy and the enigmatic Soylent company which seems to pull all the strings. However it is Edward G Robinson who steals every scene he is in, as the ageing Sol Roth who aides Heston in his investigations and yearns for the past when food was plentiful and paper was easy to come by. When I discovered that it was Robinsons last film before he died of cancer shortly after production finished, it makes the his last scene suitably poignant,which is by far the best scene in the film.
Having not read the Harry Harrison book it was adapted from, I don't know how faithful it is,but it doesn't seem to matter. It is a finely crafted film with a a conclusion that has not left any of its punch 39 years later.
The director Richard Fleischer, with the aid of inventive set design and crude but lovable special effects, paints a rather bleak but somewhat not inaccurate picture of the near future which I totally bought into as I watched on. In every scene the actors are clammy with sweat due to the global warming, with the exception of the 'furniture'-idealistic young women who escort the millionaires and float around in their apartments who enjoy the spoils of money. The whole film has that atmosphere can be detected in other 70's classics such as All The Presidents Men, Marathon Man and The French Connection,that grainy,earthy paranoid thriller atmosphere which I simply cannot get enough of. Heston is convincing as always a detective who ends up going deeper and deeper into the seedy underbelly hidden behind the exterior of bureaucracy and the enigmatic Soylent company which seems to pull all the strings. However it is Edward G Robinson who steals every scene he is in, as the ageing Sol Roth who aides Heston in his investigations and yearns for the past when food was plentiful and paper was easy to come by. When I discovered that it was Robinsons last film before he died of cancer shortly after production finished, it makes the his last scene suitably poignant,which is by far the best scene in the film.
Having not read the Harry Harrison book it was adapted from, I don't know how faithful it is,but it doesn't seem to matter. It is a finely crafted film with a a conclusion that has not left any of its punch 39 years later.
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