Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1098 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-29
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
While Soylent Green may be one of the many dystopian visions of the future, the film stands out because it's one of the few titles that addresses current environmental issues head on. Adapted from Harry Harrison's novel Make Room, Make Room, it gives us a nightmarish vision of an over-populated, polluted future on the brink of collapse--a vision that gets uncomfortably closer every year. Charlton Heston as police officer Thorn investigates a murder in between suppressing food riots and uncovers the nightmarish truth about Soylent Green, the new foodstuff being sold to the poor.

The film neatly combines police procedural with conspiracy thriller. Heston's scenes are counterpointed by more elegiac ones in which the centenarian Edward G Robinson as his friend Sol broods on the world he has outlived--his death in a euthanasia chamber is a gloriously lachrymose moment, which he plays to the hilt. Heston, too, is good as Thorn, a morally equivocal cop who loots the apartments of the victims whose deaths he investigates--he's a man just getting by in an impossible world.

On the DVD: Soylent Green on disc comes with a commentary from director Richard Fleischer, the highpoint of which is a memorable description of what it was like to work with the brilliant ailing, entirely deaf Robinson. He is joined by Leigh Taylor-Young whose work on the film as heroine led to years of serious environmentalist commitment. It has a useful contemporary making-of documentary and touching shots of Robinson's 100th birthday party with telegrams from Sinatra and others. The feature itself is presented in anamorphic widescreen with its original mono sound. --Roz Kaveney

Special Features
Commentary by director Richard Fleischer and Leigh Taylor-Young ('Shirl')
A Look at the World of Soylent Green (10 mins)
MGM's tribute to Edward G. Robinson's 101st film
Charlton Heston: Science Fiction Legend
Theatrical trailer(s)
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (16x9 Letterbox)
Sound Mono

Synopsis
21st century New York City is (still) an overpopulated mess, and the only food left is Soylent Green, a soyabean and lentil concoction with an extra-special, government-mandated ingredient. As police detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates a murder, he learns of a conspiracy with bizarre implications and discovers the horrifying truth about Soylent Green's secret ingredient. This is Edward G. Robinson's final movie, as the star died not long after filming his final scene. Based on Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!"

Customer Reviews

We are not far from this give it 100 years from now.

What a film!. Everyone should watch & understand what we on earth might end up like.

This Film offers good acting with limited effects, offering none stop chilling action story from start to end.

The story allows you to wounder what Soylent Green is about, & why are the rich always better off.

I read most of the reviews before renting from Amazon offering good inside to this film.

Should you watch too, then yes. I would like to see this film played out each year on T.V for all to see.

Rent it, be completely taken away to our Earth World! & the problems we might find in the future, if we dont stop & think first.

The film gives a good view if we had limited food, water & the will to live our lifes.

Thanks for reading.

Very scary
Set in the year 2022 in New York. Manhattan is very over-crowded and the majority of people live in poverty, literally living for their next meal. Charlton Heston plays Thorn, a policeman who at least has his own small apartment, which he shares with Sol, who's played by Edward G Robinson. Soylent Green is the latest food being produced for the masses to eat (essentially it looks like squares of green cardboard).

Whilst investigating the murder of the head of the Soylent company Thorn discovers that there is a sinister side behind the production of Soylent Green. The film develops at quite a pace, and is pretty short, so it keeps you hooked. Its portrayal of the future is intriging (and scary). For example the human race seems to have gone backwards in its treatment of women. In this vision of the future they have become 2nd class citizens again, who can be used (and abused) by men as they see fit.

Charlton Heston gives, what I would describe as his default performance. Its fine, but he was never a great actor. The film will stick in your memory for other reasons: Firstly because of Edward G Robinson. It was his 101st film role and he died two weeks after the film was completed. Secondly its a scary prediction of how we can mess this planet up. But its our children and their children who will pay the price...

A warning from our past to what is in our future.
Thought provoking and way ahead of its time. I remember my sister as a teenager seeing this film when it was first released, and then excitedly telling the family about the film's vision of the future.

Although the film now looks dated (it was after all made 34 years ago) it is I feel probably the most realistic in its forecast of the future for mankind when compared to other late 1960's and early 1970's films, such as `2001: A Space Odyssey' and `Logan's Run'.

The underlying theme of the film is that the world's population has increased to such a level that there is simply not enough food to feed everyone, and that what food production there is has been irreversibly damaged by pollution. So a synthetic `miracle' food has been developed and the masses told its raw material is harvested from plankton. It is against this backdrop that the main character - Thorn - investigates the murder of a senior executive of the corporation (Soylent) manufacturing the food.

It is another aspect or dimension of the film that has had the most impact with me: the film is set against a backdrop of a heat wave. The main characters are portrayed as sweating and damp from the heat. The streets are filled with masses of people all trying to find food and stay cool. The primary character (Thorn, played by Charlton Heston) shares an apartment with Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson). During a discussion one morning Roth starts to rant about the how world he knew as a child and a young man has been destroyed by pollution and that the constant 90-degree heat wave is the result of greenhouse gas omissions! How prescient for 1973 (the year the film was made). As far as I am aware the greenhouse effect and the warming of the Earth's climate due to carbon emissions was little known about at that time - if known about at all.

To get just an inkling of what our world could be like in the not-so-distant future see this film. It's an old saying but "the science fiction of today is the science fact of tomorrow", and `Soylent Green' gives a clear warning and advance `taster' of what we can expect from our future. How many more times can we be told we all have to do something about climate change now to prevent it becoming irreversible. See this film to see an artistic though potentially realistic view of what's ahead if we don't!