retro movie review: Soylent Green

42 years after it was released, Soylent Green is remembered for two things: the then-shocking plot twist at the end, and, to a lesser extent, screen legend Edward G. Robinson's touching final scene, both in this movie and, as it turned out, in movies in general. So much attention has been paid to the plot twist at the end that people tend to forget that most of the movie isn't directly about soylent green at all. Soylent Green definitely has some undeniable elements of science fiction, but for the most part, it's just a straight-up murder mystery, a hard-boiled detective story with 1970s aesthetics but an almost 1940s sensibility.

The story is set into motion by the murder of a reclusive millionaire, William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten, in a necessarily small role). The murder is made to look like a burglary gone wrong, but the cop on the case, Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) pretty quickly sees through this facade, and realizes that something more is going on. A couple of decades earlier, and this plot could have been made with Humphrey Bogart in the lead role.

Mr. Simonson turns out to be an influential member of the board of directors of the Soylent Corporation. In a future society where overpopulation has run amok and food sources are scarce, the Soylent Corporation has a near monopoly on food production, which makes the murder of one of their board members a big deal.

During the course of Thorn's investigation, he has to deal with the usual film noir elements: uncooperative witnesses, attempts on his life, and, of course, pressure from authority figures to declare the case closed long before it's actually solved. But if all of this makes Thorn still seem like a character meant for Bogie, there's one highly prevalent aspect of the character that makes him seem more like Alonzo Harris, the Denzel Washington character in Training Day: Thorn is a dirty cop. 

Yes, Thorn's attempts to solve the murder are sincere, but his methods are despicable. He routinely physically abuses suspects, sleeps with female witnesses, and steals items of value, both from crime scenes and from suspects' homes. In one particularly disturbing scene, Thorn attempts to pick a fight with a witness named Tab Fielding.

"I won't hit a cop!" Fielding protests, knowing that if he does so, he'll be arrested for assaulting an officer.

"I know!" Thorn chuckles with a devious grin, just before he gives Fielding a savage beating. When this fails to antagonize Fielding into hitting him, he tries plan B, and starts beating the witness's girlfriend instead. When Fielding hits Thorn in an attempt to defend his girlfriend, Thorn gloats, "for that, you'll get thirty years!" and then proceeds to beat them both a little more. And Thorn is supposed to be the hero!

All of this would be fine except it's presented at a snail's pace, and with a by-the-numbers presentation that quickly induces yawns. The only redeeming aspects of both the main character and the movie itself are in the touching scenes between Thorn and his best friend/ researcher/ roommate, played with gentility and humor by Edward G. Robinson. There is an almost brotherly love between Sol and Thorn, and their camaraderie is both amusing and heart-warming. These scenes almost don't feel like they're in the same movie where Thorn is going around cracking heads and referring to women as "furniture."

For the most part, this is a fairly unpleasant movie, with long stretches of boredom punctuated by the main character's reprehensible behavior. People love to make references to the title and the twist ending, but nobody ever talks about the fact that the supposedly sympathetic main character is really a vicious bastard. After watching Soylent Green, I suspect that the reason why the movie is so fondly remembered is because, ironically, it's actually not remembered very well at all.