SnoopyStyle In the future, Earth has become an artificial world. The world's forests are in large pods in spaceships. They are on their way to replant the earth. Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) is a caretaker on the spaceship Valley Forge. His three other crewmates are callous to his natural ways. People no longer grow food. Then they receive orders to nuke the plants and cancel the trip. Lowell decides to revolt and kill his crew. Other ships wonder why the Valley Forge has not destroyed its forested pods.The story doesn't make sense. It may make poetic sense but this future world is ludicrous. Sometime these kinds of weird non-sense stories fill the old sci-fi publications. The problem is that they are not necessarily meant to be completely logical. One can ignore the illogical premise but as a movie, one can't ignore the lack of any tension. After killing the crew, the movie really goes nowhere. This could be adapted into a poignant Star Trek episode but it's not that compelling as a full-length release.

TanQ Ecoterrorist Bruce Dern kills his three shipmates in a fit of rage when they try to follow orders and return to Earth, described as a utopia with no unemployment, no hunger and no social problems. After completing his murderous task, he steals his spaceship and anthropomorphizes three robots, believing that they make better companions than the fun loving humans he's killed. This is an important film for the early 1970's, showing that even when humanity creates a utopia there will still be one lone lunatic wanting to kill for a piece of dirt and some rabbits. The folk-music score only serves to underline the terror of this film which predates the sci- fi/horror genre by nearly 10-years.The most frightening moment of this picture takes place when Dern plays a game of poker with his robot minions in a scene eerily foreshadowed early on in the picture.

Jack Hawkins (Hawkensian) Read a brief synopsis and Silent Running looks interesting. The film imagines the dreadful prospect of a dystopian world that's bereft of wildlife and personality. It's well intentioned, prescient and chimes with contemporary environmental issues. This should be compelling, but it's just a drag.Silent Running takes place aboard a spaceship which has several domes containing an array of plants and wildlife. These are maintained by Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), a man whose strong views on ecology make him a pariah among the other crewmen. When Lowell's forestry is arranged to be destroyed by the powers that be, he reacts in a way that is, to understate, morally dubious.One of the main reasons why this is all such a drag is because we're given no depth, it isn't explained why Earth is a barren dystopia or why they're going to Saturn. You expect the crew members to imbue the film with substance however the character development is cut fatally short when Lowell blows them up early in the film. This plot development doesn't do many favours for the sole remaining character either, because as much as Lowell's indifferent and stupid colleagues annoyed me, did they really deserve to die? The film seems to justify their hurried dispatching, we're supposed to care for this drab murderer and his forest.One-man shows like 'Cast Away' require a good leading man in an extraordinary situation. The last one I saw was 'All Is Lost' with Robert Redford. It was the most extreme example of the genre I'd seen and was grossly overrated on the 'tomato-meter' at 94%, but the ambitious film just about worked for me.Silent Running gets neither an interesting lead character nor a compelling situation. Outside of an impassioned diatribe against his colleagues' indifference about the environment and the human condition, Lowell is a long faced, shaggy haired non-entity. Once he is the sole remaining homo-sapien, Lowell's only companions are three charisma bereft robots called Huey, Dewey and Louie (this is cute apparently), whose organs of communication are metal flaps that emit a quiet, meaningless sort of whistle.The supposed spectacle of Silent Running is also underwhelming. Director Douglas Trumbull worked on the special effects in '2001: A Space Odyssey', they're very much of their time in parts but nonetheless sensory and epic in scope. In Silent Running, however, the exterior shots of the spacecraft often look decidedly fake and miniature and the explosions are lamentably dated and intangible.I watched this film on Mark Kermode's recommendation, he loves this film, he considers it superior to 2001 and shockingly names it one of the greatest films ever made. He says that it's a human tale, that Dern's relationship with the robots is deeply affecting, I couldn't disagree more. The reason why Kermode likes it so much is because it's nostalgic for him, he saw at just 11- years-old and subsequently grew up loving the film – I've had similar attachment to films like Jaws, which is of course infinitely better.After a while I was willing for the film to end, I became entirely indifferent towards the narrative's dreary developments and the politics beneath them. I love nature and beautiful landscapes, I empathised with Lowell to a certain degree, however his actions make the film's message all rather muddled. Silent Running may appeal to Green extremists, however I think even they'll grow tired once they realise how little there is beyond its eco-friendly sentiment.50%www.hawkensian.com

Mr-Fusion Up until Sam Rockwell's performance in "Moon", "Silent Running" had to be the de facto movie about isolation in deep space. Bruce Dern is a man on the raggedy edge, moving from disbelief to utter deflation, with melancholy and borderline madness in between. He runs the gamut, and the whole thing sits on his capable shoulders. And the film's message - one that's thankfully not delivered with a sledgehammer - is less a sermon than a plea for action. Earth is dried out and overpopulated, but it's not too late. We can still preserve our future. We can't just plug in and give up. And even though the ending's a bleak one, that message is so earnestly conveyed that the movie still retains its power even 40 years later. It's such a simple tale, but hits home in a profound way. Dern believed in the material, and it shows.7/10