Soylent Green is supposed to be one of those movies that has a "Gotcha!" ending. And while it does, as I watched it, I realized that's not what the movie is about. What it's actually about is Charlton Heston's Detective Thorn, a police officer in a society where there is population overload and food is at a premium. I find it incredibly interesting that at night while the streets are empty the buildings are overflowing with people sleeping in the stairwells.
Heston's cop is crooked, but not overly so. He pretty much takes anything not nailed down at a dead guy's apartment (mostly food). He beats up suspects. But he's assigned to investigate a murder, and he does. This movie isn't about "Soylent Green," it's about a cop who realizes that his existence is there only to slow the wave of inevitability. Society is at a tipping point, and he's in the midst of it. And the knowledge he ends up with creates a righteous anger that will only let that wave come crashing down.
Now I'm reading much more into this movie than it probably intends, but Charlton Heston thrives in this role, and that makes our journey through this dystopian future easy to navigate. And he's ably complimented by Edward G. Robinson as Heston's best friend whose discovery of this world's secrets break him so completely is fantastic in his final role. Leigh-Taylor Young is great as the prostitute/piece of furniture who falls into/is forced into a relationship with Heston's character.
This isn't a perfect movie or even the most perfect sci-fi film. But the reason it has lasted in the public psyche as long as it has, is because it creates a very real world (the production design and the use of extras is tremendous), and the acting lets us believe it.
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