In the far-off year of 2022, pollution and overpopulation have relegated most of the planet’s population to the streets. There, in teeming piles, they await the next delivery of clean water and highly processed food products. The projection is that New York City alone houses some forty million people, and we see evidence around every corner. Police detective Thorn (Charlton Heston), fortunate enough to afford a tiny, one-room apartment amidst such squalor, literally trips over the homeless as he navigates the lobby staircase each morning. His latest job whisks him to the environs of the über-wealthy, whose spacious, luxurious furnished quarters include video game consoles and conveyable live-in concubines. There to investigate a high profile murder, he happily samples such forbidden fruits and entrenches himself on the wrong side of powerful people with dark secrets.

Although its climactic reveal has been spoiled by half a century of references and punchlines, the actual context of _Soylent Green_ is still, mostly, apt. Shot in the early 70s, but inspired by a mid-60s science fiction novel, it’s very much an of-its-time depiction of a bleak and hopeless future. The metaphorical slope wasn’t quite slippery enough to get the real world to this point, fortunately, but it’s easy to understand the older generation’s concerns... mostly because we still share many of them. These big ideas are realized quite effectively on the big screen, and they’re the primary reason to tune in. The murder plot and corporate cover-ups, marred by Heston’s excessive histrionics, haven’t aged half as well.