Watch Silent Running For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

No need to recap plot points. I note that many critics fault the movie for its 'hippie environmental message'. Well, I guess writers Cimino and associates get the final kudos now that global warming is endorsed by 95% of climate scientists. In that critical sense, the film's quite prescient for its time. Plus, the nutritional food message also proves prescient given the health hazards of so many processed foods. "Hippie" or not, these are difficult lessons for many folks, given traditional habits. Thus the movie's basic message turns out to be more pressing than ever.Nonetheless, I'm in sympathy with those who find the movie boring. The second half is more visual effects than engaging drama. For example, the various movements among modules or whatever are left unexplained. Thus their comings and goings are no more than visual occurrences meant, I guess, to impress us with the movie makers technical prowess. At the same time, astronaut Dern is now alone in deep space, having jettisoned his shipmates. Clearly, an entertainment problem is created by nothing more than a man alone in deep space. Thus the cutesy robots become major actors. These also allow Dern to break silence and share his thoughts with the audience. In that sense, it's too bad the other three astronauts are taken out so early. Keeping them around longer would have replaced the parade of effects with more human interest. Besides, any movie without at least one well- turned ankle needs a lot of compensation. Anyway, the 90-minutes remains well ahead of its time. Oddly, however, it's a movie I respect more than I enjoyed.

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.

Silent Running is based on the very real possibility that there will be no more 'right' to life in the United States because its citizens would not be allowed to grow food. Forty years after the film's release, the the current advance of 'right to farm' laws champions corporate domination over all food sources.Little did the creators of Silent Running know that the majority of Americans forty years later would, indeed, reject real food, favoring processed food instead, just as in their film.Silent Running even covers why Americans would find the situation perfectly acceptable: because a thoroughly 'democratized' nation would ideally be able to provide labor opportunities to the entirety of its marginalized proletariat.The film's intelligence is subtle and carried through by an effort of pure-heartedness, hindered only by very poor pacing. If one's patience can last until the development of the lovable Drone's personalities, finishing the film won't be any problem.

Though there are some thought-provoking ideas put forth in SILENT RUNNING, the overall lack of logic of much of the film keeps it from being a must-see film. Why, for instance, are the biospheres orbiting so far from the sun? Photosynthesis, anyone...? And I've always had a hard time watching the amputees- the forerunners of R2-D2, no doubt, crossed with the Daleks- waddling awkwardly around the ship. Bruce Dern is the sole saving grace of this one: Freeman Lowell is one of his finest performances (which is saying quite a bit). Given today's dire straits, the basic idea of jettisoning the world's remaining flora and fauna into space may not be that far-fetched, after all.