Released in 1973 and coming out this week in a new 4K UHD transfer on Blu-ray, Soylent Green is set in the distant (!) year of 2022, in a polluted, congested New York City bursting with 40 million inhabitants as the world teeters on the edge of ecological and societal collapse. The film stars Charlton Heston (whose brand in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was apocalypse, with films like Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man to his name) as Thorn, a detective assigned to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman named Simonson (Joseph Cotten).
Simonson was on the board of the Soylent corporation, which produces the processed soy and plankton wafers that feed most of the world’s population. Suspecting that Simonson was assassinated, Thorn doggedly pursues the case despite being warned off it by his superiors and escaping several attempts on his own life — until he ultimately discovers the horrifying truth behind Soylent and its newest product, Soylent Green.
