Review the Queue- Soylent Green

Netflix has a new feature where you can watch some movies online instead of waiting for the physical copy to be sent to you. I decided to try it out and watched Soylent Green.

This is a movie starring Charlton Heston (aka Moses) who is a detective looking to solve the murder of a very wealthy man. Global warming and over population has wracked the Earth leaving it barely able to support it's human population. The story was written by the great science fiction writer Harry Harrison. I am a big fan of his Stainless Steel Rat series. The story is very much in the style of the older hard core science fiction. There are plot holes that you could drive a truck through (people quite honestly do not make very good food so using them to fuel future generations would not be terribly efficient.) but the basic story is quite entertaining if you try not to pick at the actual science behind the premise.

The acting in the movie while generally pretty good was sometimes rather distracting form the plot. I found the fight scenes especially over done but then that was also the norm for that time. It was rather amusing to see the computers and what not be immensely less advanced (the movie is set in 2022) that what we have now. There is a scene where the love interest is playing a arcade game (it looked like space invaders) on a giant stand up console when there are such things as personal hand held game systems that have far better graphics and more complicated games. I also had to wonder why the main character was always whining about the heat yet he wore a jacket all the time.

Just remember that if you find yourself in 15 years consuming green wafers as your main source of nutrition you might want to take a second and think about what you are eating. Soylent Green is people y'all.




Soylent+Green movies Science+Fiction Netflix