Set in the not too distant future of 2022, Soylent Green is based in a New York City where, as the population say, nothing works anymore. Vastly overpopulated to the point where families are sleeping in stairways and people simply walk past dead bodies in the streets, the city has gone to Hell. It's not just New York, however, it's all the major cities. As such, food is in short supply and high demand and much of the world's food supply is controlled by a company named Soylent, who ration out squares in red, yellow and the most popular color, green. In this dystopian future lives a cop named Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) who lives with an aging Jewish bookworm named Sol (Edward G. Robinson in his final film role).

When a wealthy man named William Simonson (Joseph Cotton) is murdered, Thorn is sent to investigate. At first he figures it was a burglary gone wrong but soon starts putting a few pieces of the puzzle and, after interviewing Simonson's 'furniture' (a kept woman who comes with the apartment!), Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young) and his bodyguard, Tab Fielding (Chuck Connors), he starts to figure he was actually assassinated. He steals some books from Simonson's lush apartment and brings them back to Sol who, through some clever research, ties Simonson to Soylent and to New York's Governor, Santini. When Thorn pays a visit to Fielding's apartment and finds that not only does he have some 'furniture' of his own (Paula Kelly) but that he's able to provide her with fresh strawberries (a rare and expensive delicacy in this future) he starts to dig deeper into the situations surrounding Simonson's murder and how it ties in to a few other deaths related to the case - all while finding the time to sleep and shower with Shirl now and then.

So yeah, Soylent Green almost forty years later, how does it hold up? Reasonably well, actually. It's hard to imagine anyone not knowing the big shock ending at this point but the buildup works nicely and director Richard Fleisher manages to keep the tension and mild paranoia thick and steady throughout the movie. This isn't an effects intensive film, not by sci-fi movie standards at least, so the movie instead relies on story and character development to pulls us in and thankfully the script and the performances are strong enough across the board that it is able to do just that. That's not to say that there aren't a couple of set pieces in the film that stand out - Sol's goodbye scene definitely relies on effects and the riot in which the police use tractors to scoop people off of the streets and into the back of their trucks like so much human garbage immediately come to mind - but this isn't a sci-fi film filled with space travel, laser gun battles or aliens.

While Fleisher's assured direction is great, the performances are what really stands out here. Joseph Cotton is memorable even if he's not in the film for very long, and Chuck Connors manages to be both suspicious and menacing in his role. Leigh Taylor-Young is beautiful and sympathetic (at one point she tells Thorn that Williamson doesn't abuse her, and he in turn tells her that she's lucky - indicating that 'furniture' is treated very roughly) and while her falling for Thorn may seem like nothing more than a plot device thrown in simply to give the film a romantic angle, at least she makes it work. Robinson is also excellent in what would sadly be his last role. He plays the 'wise old man' role well and provides the film with some welcome and effective comic relief that doesn't seem at all out of place alongside the film's darker side. This is, however, Heston's show. Yes, he plays to type here, growling his way through the picture and behaving as the man's man that he was known to be, but he's great in the part. The very fact that he manages to spend most of the time with an ascot on and still remain macho is testament to his testosterone and it's in tough guy roles like this that we all know he excelled in. His screen presence commands attention and he makes the most of the material.

So ultimately, while aspects of Soylent Green are dated and maybe even a little corny by today's standards, it's still very much a worthwhile film. It's dark message, sadly, is not out of the realm of possibility and as such, it retains some poignancy in spite of itself - and on top of that it's got some great actors and plenty of excitement and suspense.

Soylent Green is presented in a good AVC encoded 2.40.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer that isn't reference quality by any stretch but which does offer a pretty noticeable upgrade from its standard definition counterpart. Detail is generally good but there are some shots that look a bit murky and soft. There isn't much in the way of print damage to complain about and the film's grain structure seems pretty much intact without any obvious digital scrubbing or edge enhancement to complain about. There aren't any compression artifacts and color reproduction is pretty decent. Some of the outdoor scenes were shot with a greenish tint to them to give the appearance of a contaminated environment so the color in these specific scenes is a bit off but that's an intentional decision on the part of the filmmakers and not a problem with the disc. All in all, if this isn't going to floor you with its picture quality it does improve on the previous DVD release quite a bit.