Soylent Green (1973)

No, Soylent Green isn't actually Heston's scarf... I know! it surprised me too!

Genre: Drama Sci-Fi Thriller

Starring: Charleton Heston (The Omega Man • Planet Of The Apes), Leigh Taylor-Young

Directed By: Richard Fleischer (Tora! Tora! Tora! • Red Sonja)

Overview: The year is 2022. There are 40 million inhabitants in New York City and everything is in short supply. A cop investigating the murder of a Soylent Board executive finds himself marked for death for digging too deeply into the cause.

Performance:

You expect an over-dramatic Planet of The Apes-yelling, Moses-earth-shaking Charlton Heston right? Well, guess what? This is probably the best role I've ever seen him act in. This director really knew to hold the reigns tight until unleashing his stuff and the entire supporting cast, including Brock Peters who I instantly recognized from The Incident. Great characters, and great people wearing their skins.
Rating: 8

Cinematography:

Here we are watching a well-designed (for the era) dystopian future unfold with a little ever-present oppression and chaos, that sort of thing, then near the end we see the underrated part of the film. I'm really temped to go ahead and talk about the beautiful montage of images juxtaposed with the setting and context, but that would ruin the surprise, a surprise more worthy of discovering than the 'big secret'. Tears may even flow, it's that moving. It's nicely shot, that's for sure.
Rating: 8

Script:

This is definitely the kind of film you have to pay attention to. There's wit and one liners, there's cultural lingo - like calling the chick that comes with the apartment 'furniture' - but the actual plot elements come and go fairly quickly, which is nice because who wants to be force-fed reminders of everything? Not me. I like that this assumes a healthy level of intelligence, but without being convoluted the way Syriana did.
Rating: 8

Plot:

Blade Runner is set in a dystopian future with a cop investigating some murderers, and ends with a nice finish and a twist. That's one of my favorite movies. This is a pretty similar plot, all told. What makes this movie great is the degree of corruption our cop is involved in. When he looks into the murder of a rich man, he leaves with his booze, meat and lettuce, and has absolutely no qualms about it. Without the weight of how crappy the world is to the main characters, you end up with a world without context. The writer made sure to cover that, to answer more personal questions. As for the big secret twist, it is a doozie.
Rating: 8

Mood:

I was looking forward to laughing at the disco seventies vision of the future and found instead a place where dust and smog are ever-present although there are next to no cars, a place where governments can't afford to give their cops uniforms and half the city is unemployed. Yeah, the decor in the homes of the rich have the shag-loving orange and the futuristic style decor that was... totally current in '73... mental note: never play videogames in the future if they're four-bit pre-Atari... Still, the way these people are, the way the system speaks in the little things they don't have and the big things they offer for free, that's a world that was created before a story. that's a world worth learning about.
Rating: 8

Isn't this just a shot of white people lined up to teach English in China?

Overall Rating: 80% (Delicious!)

Aftertaste:

The surprises that come from just going ahead and believing someone. I was expecting the biggest turd in the world: some dystopian thing full of plot holes as deep as The Limb Salesman. Frankly I was looking forward to heckling this with The Illustrator, The Illustratrix, and Girlfriend of Squish - who for some wicked reason didn't know the big secret ending, made about as famous as "Luke, I am Your Father...". Turns out I found that watching and paying attention was far more rewarding. You just might too. What sucks most is that this wasn't in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. This is so much more important than so much of the stuff I've seen from that damn book...