Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

I first saw this movie in the theaters long, long ago. At the time, the movie was mostly wasted on me. If you're too young for this movie, it's still quite good, especially considering how long ago it came out.

A few years later I ran across the book (in the early days of my book fanaticism), and recalled (vaguely) the movie. The book, I should mention, is very thin. But, it is thin in much the same way that 'Whipping Star' or 'The Godmakers' by Frank Herbert, or 'Phantastes' by George MacDonald are thin -- which is to say that it is pretty thick actually, it just doesn't have a lot of pages.

When I read the book, I could hardly believe that the movie contained all that the book did. Of course, while reading the book I was reminded greatly of the movie, but I was fascinated to think that all that happened in the movie and I had somehow missed it. It was a great coming of age event in my life.

Naturally, I had to see the movie again. Lo and behold, all that stuff did happen in the movie (mostly).

To start with, the story, even in its basic premise, is pretty daring.

It's the story of a large city which is completely enclosed. The idea being that we are somewhere in the future beyond the time where it is safe to live outside the protective dome of the city. War, radiation, and suchlike.

That, of course, is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that since the city only has the ability to produce limited resources, and has only limited space, people are only allowed to live to be thirty.

When you are thirty, a small crystal in your palm changes color, and you go to the 'carousel', where people who are all thirty take the stage in costumes. Everyone else turns out to watch as these people are rather fancifully killed in this spectacular ceremony.

The belief that this sort of thing is 'the right thing to do' is given to the residents of this city in many ways. It is basically a part of their religion, although they don't have a real religion exactly. There is some chance, which is not particularly well explained, that people who go to carousel will be reborn.

It is also given to them in the purely pragmatic form. There is only so much in the way of resources, and people going on past thirty would be taking resources from the young. This wouldn't be the proper thing to do, because they had their fair share, and no one was trying to take from them when they were young.

Now, a bit more into the story, the main character is a man named Logan. But, he isn't just an ordinary man. He's a sandman. A sort of policeman who hunts down runners. Runners are those who don't quite jive with the whole being killed just because you're thirty idea, and try to escape the city.

On a fairly routine mission searching for runners, Logan comes across some hints of a place called Sanctuary. Sanctuary is the place runners are trying to get to, and it seems that there is a certain 'underground' of those who are going to run. A secret society of those who try to help people out.

The computer that runs the entire operation questions Logan about Sanctuary, and before long Logan's palm-crystal turns red. It turns red before it should. Logan becomes a runner. A sandman turning runner is, of course, unheard of, but Logan begins to get suspicious about the fact that his palm-crystal turns red early after his interrogation with the computer.

So, Logan is running, taking a certain scantily clad woman with him. His old partner becomes the one who is after him, and the majority of the movie focuses on his attempt to find Sanctuary (it is called Logan's Run after all).


Now, there you have the plot of the movie in a nutshell, but the true story of the movie goes very far beyond what you ‘see’ in the film.

The confrontational ideas that are proposed to us in the movie are everywhere. Not only do we get the cold, distant feeling of a morality as doled out by a computer that is working properly, we also get the bizarre, and hauntingly real force of the other side of things being run by computers in the form of a sentinel robot gone wrong who kills people who escape to a certain, mostly unknown part of the city.

There are two main themes running through the movie. One, being controlled by people who are doing it ‘for your own good’, is still being controlled. Two, pleasure is not happiness.

The first theme is perhaps the more intrusive, and more readily apparent. The main computer running the city is, of course, of the opinion that the ‘system’ is for the benefit of everyone, and the rules are for everyone’s good. Even the robot gone berserk fires his freezing ray at Logan and friend while completely of the belief that being frozen is in their best interests.

We also have the somewhat mythical idea of the people who started the city long in the past. They too have set in motion events which completely control people’s lives because of what they consider the greater good.

The sandmen slaughter people who want nothing more than to go on living, and even mockingly criticize the arrogance of people who want to take their unfair share of things. An idea, of course, which is inherently flawed. People who run away from the city obviously do not exhaust any more resources than those who die.

And besides, say the sandmen, they’ve had the best of life. The city is a place where work is fairly non-existent, and pleasures are to be had everywhere. Children are, however, taken away from their parents and raised in schools so that no one will know anything about their family. Your father might be harder to give up to the carousel.


But, it turns out that the point is not primarily that people do not get to live after thirty, but rather that they do not live at all. They spend their time going from one entertainment to the next, in a pursuit of happiness, and they feel that they are happy.

We see, early on, that Logan is beginning to have his doubts about life, and this is long before his crystal turns red. Logan putters about his futuristic apartment examining the possibilities of ‘What to do now?’ and finds that he is growing bored. It is not the fact that Logan’s life is about to end that causes him to run, it is more the realization that this is not life at all.


The movie is seriously lacking in special effects, especially by today's standards, but when I think about it I am glad the movie wasn't made today. If it were, it's likely that the majority of the effort would be moved toward making it look good.

A tinking, sputtering, wind-up looking robot would not be enough, and the fact that it is a metaphor certainly wouldn't be enough. A computer running a city, which only manifests itself as a room with black walls and certain inputs would definitely not be enough. And, the haunting voice of that computer with its insistent call to 'Identify!' would not be enough.

Being scared of the computer system left unseen would not be enough. The chill of the program running things behind the small curtain in the corner (pay no attention to that man behind the curtain) wouldn't be enough, and the moviemakers of today would insist on giving the 'bad' computer a revolting, likely glowing green face that people could more easily attach their fear to.


I can't really speak to what sort of review this movie had when it first came out, but if what I have seen about the movie is any judge, it wasn't taken too seriously. It certainly isn't now.

That is why I selected this movie to be part of matt_harney's Underappreciated film write off. It was very difficult for me to choose a movie for this, because I am basically of the view that there are only two kinds of movies, the underappreciated and the overappreciated.

I highly recommend taking a look at this movie and more importantly taking a look at what is really going on in the movie as opposed to what just jumps up and smacks you in the face as most movies would have you do.


The others in this write off are:

ainsleyjo
alex_isit
angflowr
benho
ebrown2
girlgoddess
kris-kochanski
JackSommersby
JavaDevil
JuiceJW
machkick
matt_harney
mangiotto
Mattels
Mike_Bracken
MrsNormanMaine
Psychovant
scott29
shadow8
stargull
teskue
third_man
Wokelstein



Take a look at their reviews as well. As I'm late with this (Vormancian plays the six-week-old baby trump card yet again) I have read most of them and they are quite good.


Thanks for taking a look at my review, and thanks to Matt for the invite to the write off.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS