If any of you watched Saturday Night Live in the early 90's, you probably saw Phil Hartman's impersonation of Chuck Heston in Soylent Green... he also spoiled the ending of the movie. Soylent Green is made of people. But there's a little more to this future-fic movie than that.
Soylent Green is set in New York, 2020, population 40,000,000, and the world's gone into industrial overdrive. Obviously overcrowding has become the worlds biggest problem with no apparent solution. Director Richard Fleisher did an excellent job turning New York into what is essentially China with highrises. There are no moving cars on the street as traffic has stopped long ago. People live out of them now. Staircases and fire escapes are littered with homeless. Food is rationed out by its sole producer, the Soylent company, who make an entire spectrum of nutrient suppliments (Soylent Red, Green, Orange, etc.). Ration day on the street is madness, with bulldozers and police ready to stop roits once the supply is gone. Real food is sparce and only for the wealthy, barter and lifting are the main sources of personal acquisition... and that's just a small amount of the detail put into developing the destitute world of the film.
The actual plot of the film deals with Detective Thorn (Chuck Heston) who comes across a peculiar muder, choc full of conspiracy. Eventually the trail leads back to the Soylent company and the "shocking" ending. It's odd though, the last 20 minutes of the film show bodies being brought into aa factory, and Soylent Green coming out. If you couldn't figure it out before Thorn reveals it then there's something wrong with you.
The finale is abrupt - as Thorn is being taken away by medics after being shot, he reveals to his lieutenant that Soylent Green is made of people, and that the lieutenant has to do something about it - then it ends, leaving the resolution quite open to what I believe are 3 possibilities: 1)the liutenant does something about it, seeing that Thorn was shot for some reason, 2)the lieutenant does nothing, previously shown as having been bought by the Soylent company, so nobody believes Thorn, or 3)nobody cares, possibly the most shocking alternative.
Not a great movie by any means, but the atmosphere and even the story are compelling enoug to hold your interest.