Charlton Heston plays 'Thorn'...a detective in the near futures New York Police Department. The population of New York is between 30 and 40 million, and space and food are both at a premium. Entire famies sleep on staircases. Water is scarce. Real Meat and fruit are so rare as to be considered delicacies. Riot Police patrol during the shopping hours in the business district.
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Electricity is in such short supply that civil offices use portable on-site generators to keep their office machinery and lights on. While all of this sounds impossibly bleak; the director Richard Fleisher manages to make it seem all too casual....and possible. This film was made in 1973, and now in 2003, I look at the state of affairs in the world and can see our planet slowly shifting toward this level of overcrowding and resource deprivation.
Heston as Thorn gets involved in the investigation of a member of the rich elite, and although having already been quickly established as one of the "good guys"; Thorn acts like a corrupt thug as he pilfers rare items from the deceased' apartment (Soap is considered rare). As the investigation goes on, Thorn finds some printed books in the dead mans apartment and takes them to his partner 'Sol', played with exceptional characterization by the then terminally ill film legend, Edward G. Robinson.
Sol reads the books, and discovers that the Soylent corporation, which provides the food wafers that are the main dietary supplement of the majority of the planet, has been covering up something about their plankton derived food product. All the clues are there, but Sol needs to have his suspicions confirmed, so he takes the books to a cloistered repository of books and learned people that serve as the virtual memory of the city.
In the meantime, Heston becomes physically and emotionally attached to the live-in girlfriend (spelled p-a-i-d e-s-c-o-r-t) of the murdered billionaire. She returns the affection to Thorn, who she at first sees as only a protector to keep her from immediately being sold to the next person that rents the high rise condo she shared with the dead man. Eventually, after seducing Thorn to stay longer with incentives like a real shower with hot water, they make love.
The powers that be try to keep Thorn off the case when he starts to get too close to the truth, by reassigning him to another case and burying the murder investigation, but Thorn is too stubborn in his desire to find out the truth, and so he becomes the target of hitmen. Meanwhile, Sol has had his suspicions confirmed about the content of the books he had deciphered. The truth leaves Sol so shaken, that he leaves a note for Thorn, saying that he is going 'home'. In this overcrowded society, there is no longer room for cemetaries to bury people, so when a person decides to end it all, they go to a Suicide Facility, where they sign the correct paperwork and are given a very dignified and appropriately serene lethal injection.
Thorn finds the note and reunites with Sol, just in time to get a whispered message from the aged police aide. The whispered message impels Thorn to investigate one of the Soylent Corporations processing plants, via the back of a delivery truck from the Suicide Center. It is there, at the height of the movie, while being chased by armed guards of the high security facility, that Thorn discovers the naked truth with his own eyes. "Soylent Green is people,....we're eating people!", one of the most classic lines in cinema, is soon uttered as Thorn carries the gruesome truth back to the masses, even as he is struggling for life against the hitmen which have caught up to him.
The review of this Movie prepared by Bronze Tiger
