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Soylent Green (19-Apr-1973)
Director: Richard Fleischer Writer: Stanley R. Greenberg From novel: Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison Keywords: Sci-Fi, Dystopian, Cannibalism
REVIEWS Review by Don (posted on 25-May-2009) To give this movie a rating is sort of academic. As entertainment, I recall good acting by great stars holding together a somewhat lacking plot. But then, during that era we had our share of pessimistic, eco-disaster, post-nuclear, or in this case overpopulated world movies that this one fit right into.
However, embedded in this movie is one scene particularly memorable to those baby boomers of us now faced with elder care, and the difficult decisions regarding end-of-life decisions. While modern medical science in the real world has worked overtime to come up with new medicines, procedures and equipment to prolong life, in the Soylent Green world it is the opposite. Euthenasia is encouraged. It serves as a grisly source for the food of the masses, as well as a solution to the world's burgeoning overpopulation. Edward G. Robinson, when it is his time to die, is made comfortable, surrounded with big TV screens and pleasant pictures. Nice music is playing in the background. I can't recall if he is permitted a last dinner (the movie has a scene about eating contraband beefsteak instead of Soylent Green, maybe I'm getting that confused.)
Anyway, for a third time in my life I'm helping an 80+ year old aging parent make it through her last years. The scene is not as restful and comfortable as Edward G. Robinson's passing in the movie. Perhaps there is a lesson here from the movie's producers and directors that we have missed. Maybe Jack Kavorkian wasn't all wrong.
Oh, and one last note. When Robinson passed away in real life, I was told he had his extensive collection of fine artwork paraded into his room and displayed at the foot of his hospital bed, so that he could enjoy looking at them one last time. I wonder where he got the idea to do that?--don
Review by Dvarpala (posted on 9-Jan-2008) A stark depiction of a not-too-distant future, where society is on the point of collapse as the Earth's resources are essentially exhausted - due to pollution and over-use.
Set in New York, the majority of the population are starving and desperate for state food hand-outs, one of which is "Soylent Green".
Charlton Heston plays a police officer helping, among other things, to control the inevitable food riots that ensue whenever ther is a distribution of food.
His involvment in a murder case leads him to the horrible nature of "Soylent Green", which is basically recycled human corpses.
Very much of it's time (1973), this is topical viewing in today's ecological aware world.
Locate a copy of this film here.
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