Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a future in which overpopulation leads to depleted resources, which in turn leads to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables and meat are rare, expensive commodities, and much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green" wafers.
The film overlays the science fiction and police procedural genres as it depicts the efforts of New York City police detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) and elderly police researcher Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) to investigate the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman named William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten). Thorn and Roth uncover clues which suggest that it is more than simply a bungled burglary.
The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.
Click here for video
Plot
Set in the year 2022, Soylent Green depicts a dystopian future in which the population has grown to forty million in New York City alone. Most housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and the impoverished homeless fill the streets and line the fire escapes and stairways of buildings. Food as we know it today–including fruit, vegetables, and meat–is a rare and expensive commodity. Most of the world's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation (Portmanteau from soy(bean) + lent(il)), including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green - a small green wafer which is advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties, but it is—like most other food—in short supply, which often leads to food riots.
Processed "Soylent Green" ration wafers
Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is a New York City police detective who lives in a dilapidated, cramped one-room apartment with his aged partner Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson). Roth is a former professor who searches through the now-disordered remnants of written records and books to help Thorn's investigations. Roth and his like are known as "books". He tells Thorn about the times before the ecological disaster and population crisis, when real food was plentiful, although Thorn is generally not interested in the "stories", finding most of it too hard to believe.
Thorn is assigned to investigate the murder of William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten). When he goes to the crime scene, he finds Simonson lying in a pool of blood from being struck multiple times in the back of the head. Instead of looking for clues, the poorly-paid detective helps himself to some of the wealthy man's food, liquor, shower with real hot water and soap, and books. He also questions Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), an attractive 24-year old prostitute (euphemistically known as "furniture") who comes with the luxury apartment, and Simonson's bodyguard, Tab Fielding (Chuck Connors), who claims that he was told to escort Shirl on a shopping trip when the attack took place.
Returning to his apartment, he gives Roth two large books he took from Simonson's apartment, the two-volume Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019. Thorn returns to work and talks to the Chief of Detectives, telling him that he suspects it may have been an assassination, since nothing was stolen from the apartment and the murder seemed professional. He finds it odd that the luxury apartment's sophisticated alarm and monitoring electronics happened to be inoperative on the night of the murder, and his bodyguard just happened to be out of the apartment at the time.
After Thorn questions Fielding's live-in "furniture", he realizes she was eating from a "$150 a jar" of strawberry jam, which is an out-of-place luxury for the prostitute of a bodyguard. He returns to his own apartment to eat a meal of the purloined food, where Roth tells him that Simonson was a member of the board of directors of the Soylent Corporation, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Thorn then returns to question Shirl, who tells him that Simonson had become deeply troubled in the days before his death, even taking her to church. Thorn later attempts to question the priest about Simonson's confession, but the priest is almost catatonic with exhaustion and does not reveal anything. Fielding later murders the priest to ensure he never talks. After Thorn begins to uncover evidence on why Simonson was murdered, New York Governor Santini (Whit Bissell) instructs Thorn's superior officer, Lieutenant Hatcher (Brock Peters), to close the investigation. However, Thorn refuses, and continues his investigation into the murder. Later, when Thorn is on riot duty during the distribution of rations, Simonson's murderer fires several shots at Thorn, wounding him, but Thorn is able to push his attacker under a riot control vehicle, a "scoop".
In the meantime, Roth examines oceanographic reports (that Thorn took from Simonson's apartment) with other intellectuals at the "supreme exchange," a library of old books. The other books convince Roth of a "horrible" truth, which despite reading it for himself he finds almost impossible to believe. The "books" intend to use the overwhelming evidence against the Soylent Corporation and to prove what Soylent is doing before taking it to the Council of Nations. Unable to live with what he has uncovered, Roth opts for assisted suicide or active, voluntary euthanasia (euphemistically known as "going home") at a government clinic. There, he is taken to a comfortable bed, is given a poison-laced beverage, and is shown panoramic views of an unspoiled pristine Earth as he dies. As Roth is viewing this, Thorn (who has since read a note from Roth that he is "going home") forces the staff to allow him to see and talk to Roth. He thus sees the earth as it once was for the first time. Overwhelmed at seeing what is for him such wondrous natural beauty, he is moved to tears. During Roth's final moments, he begs Thorn to prove the horrible truth about "Simonson... Soylent."
After Roth dies, Thorn sneaks into the basement of the government-assisted suicide facility, where he sees corpses being loaded onto waste disposal trucks. He secretly hitches a ride on one of the trucks, which is driven to a heavily guarded waste disposal plant. Once inside the plant, Thorn sees how the corpses are processed into Soylent Green wafers. After Thorn escapes from the plant and heads for the supreme exchange with the information, he is ambushed by Fielding and several other gunmen. In the shootout, Thorn kills some of the gunmen, but is himself wounded. He retreats into a cathedral filled with homeless people. After a desperate fight, Thorn stabs and kills Fielding.
When police backup arrives, the seriously wounded and nearly hysterical Thorn confides to Hatcher the horrible secret behind Soylent Green and urges him to spread the word: "Soylent Green is people! We've got to stop them somehow!"
