Arrow certainly has a theme going with their July releases because this and Falling Down are very sweaty movies that look great in 4K. Soylent Green (out on July 28) is a film I’ve known about for as long as I can remember but this is the first time I’ve seen it. I didn’t bother with it for years because I knew the twist before I knew the movie thanks to an SNL sketch about Soylent Green sequels with Phil Hartman, which culminates with them going back to the well and Hartman ending the film with: “Soylent Green is still made out of people! They didn’t change the recipe like they said they were going to! It’s still people! Argh!!!”
Between that and jokes about it in Futurama, I figured it was a one-trick pony of a movie, and I could skip it. But with Arrow releasing a new 4K, I felt like it was finally time to check it out and see if it was still worth it even though I knew the big surprise.
In short, it is. I always enjoy old sci-fi dystopia movies that take place in what is now the past. In this case: 2022. It’s amusing to see what they thought the future technology was going to be like. With Soylent Green, though, technology took a backseat as the food and water supply dwindled, leaving only city hellscapes left filled with desperate, starving people and a handful of corporate elites still profiting despite the grim circumstances.
That all sounds miserable, and it is, but this movie doesn’t wallow in it. People are used to these conditions, so the whole thing is more of a murder mystery / buddy movie with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in his final role.
The scenes with Heston and Robinson are the standout and provide the emotional core of the film. The best scene in the film is when Robinson cooks a meal with real food that Heston took from a murder victim’s apartment. They both convincingly convey that this is the best meal they’ve ever had, and it’s simply delightful.
As for the aforementioned twist, I imagine modern audiences would pick up on things pretty quickly even without already knowing about it because we’ve been conditioned to look for such things, especially in dystopian movies. The powerful are always hiding some awful secret in such films. But I can see how this worked over fifty years ago.
Transfer and Special Features
This movie looks amazing. The environmental conditions have led to extreme heat, and you can see each bead of sweat in 4K. It amplifies the miserable world of the film. I’m glad this is the first format in which I saw this.
As for the special features, there are a lot of interesting archival options and a newly recorded commentary.
The old promo for the film was interesting, and the stuff celebrating Robinson’s 101st (and final) feature was nice.
There are lengthy interviews that are more career-spanning than Soylent specific with the director and Heston. Heston’s is interesting because it’s audio-only. So it plays over the movie like a commentary, but it’s not as long as the film, so it ends when Robinson’s death sequence begins. Not sure if that was intentional, but I found it interesting.
I think it’s safe to say this is the definitive version for fans of this film.
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