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Logan's Run

Logan's Run

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: We Have Seen The Future...And It's Studio 54!
Review: 'Logan's Run' is a rare breed of sci-fi movie - dramatically superior to much of what followed it, but never gaining enough respect commercially to rise above the dreck. It could be argued that much of the sci-fi that was made between '2001: A Space Odyssey' and 'Star Wars' is among the best - 'Rollerball', 'Silent Running', the Michael Crichton movies ('The Andromeda Strain', 'Coma', 'Westworld') - as that comatose period for the genre meant less money for special effects, thus more focus on the script. The result has been movies that can still pack a punch in this age of 'The Phantom Menace' and 'The Matrix Reloaded'.
That said, 'Logan's Run' is a unique anomaly of the period - it has an increasingly-relevant premise - loss of respect toward history and all that has gone before us - but yes, it also has increasingly-dated visuals.
In a nutshell, it's the 23rd century, the last survivors of humankind are living in a dome on the shore just shy of what was once Washington, D.C., and barring the little red lights stuck on everyone's palms, everything is just peachy-keen...babies are practically manufactured, makeovers can be done in seconds, and instant matter-transporters that can lock onto anyone without protest mean T&A for everyone. The catch, of course, is that you'd better live it up when you hit the ripe old age of 29, because in another year you're taking a one-way trip on the giant rotisserie known as Carousel - it's the law. (...)
That is, of course, until we meet the hero, a curious Sandman named Logan-Five (yup, surnames are a thing of the past). Played by Michael 'Basil Exposition' York, Logan is called in by the city's master computer to hunt down unaccounted-for 'runners' - about a thousand of them - and to do this, he has to pose as a 'runner', ergo the computer rewires his little palm-light to start blinking...the sign of a runner! With the help of an attractive female subversive he just happened to teleport - Jenny Agutter - Logan embarks on his mission to escape the city and find the missing 'runners'. Making matters worse, one of the Sandmen who's also his best friend has found out Logan's up to something stinky, and the pursuit begins.
The rest unfolds at a slightly-uneven pace, yet the overall message remains intact and the final resolution is not entirely certain (the late Peter Ustinov figures prominently into it), but it's satisfactory.
Of course, the real stars of the film are the set pieces - a dazzling disco-inferno of what the future will be like, providing you're actually living in 1976 when you're seeing this movie. Still, there are some standouts among the scenery - the Carousel, the remains of Washington, D.C., the robot Box's icy digs, Farrah Fawcett's hair - all well-crafted effects for their time.

'Logan's Run' is a pretty good movie...as long as you can resist the urge to slip on the gold chains and take a spin in the Lowrider afterward.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Beyond Terrible
Review: I think people who see movies when they are children and grow up, so to speak, with movies have a total inability to separate the good and the bad. This movie is absolutely terrible. Even in 1976 these are just about the worst/cheapest effects possible. The story itself is interesting to a degree but the execution is LIKE an execution. Jessica/Logan are at least decent but there is just no excuse for the dialogue, the effects, the continuity of the story, the look of the film, or the direction.

I rented this today and am a big fan of Star Trek, the original show, and even Planet of the Apes, the TV series, so I am open to great characters overriding aweful plots/effects but Logan's Run is just about as bad as it gets, almost on par with 'Dune', almost. This movie just doesn't stand the test of time.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Run to see this film...just don't pay for it.
Review: The premise was good, the execution was grade A cheese. The glitzy mall-like sets DO NOT age well. The script and acting are perhaps intentionally puerile. The miniaturization used for the aerial shots within the dome were bad EVEN for the times, they LOOKED liked toys. The entire production has the look and feel of a typical Irwin Allen TV series.
Farah-Fawcett's character is nothing but a cameo of a ditzy blonde Barbie. Jenny Agutter is cute, however. Michael York and Agutter look like they're having fun in what seems to be an unintentionally fun movie. Peter Ustinov hams up his short scene to the point of being saccharine, but provides a pseudo-cuddly relief from the triteness of the entire production.
So why should you RUN to see this film? Because I wanted to be as poorly funny in the title to this post as was this movie. Seriously, however, there's an outside chance that Logan's Run might become one of your "guilty pleasures", much like any theatrical-release movie that plays better on TV than in the theater.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Bizarre but Entertaining Movie!
Review: In 1976 I went to the theater and saw Logan's Run and I really enjoyed it. Yes it's bizarre. Yes the special effects are not as good as they are in movies being made these days. Yes the costumes are flimsy. But the acting is very good, especially the acting from Michael York and the late Richard Jordan and also Jenny Agutter is quite good too. I had taped Logan's Run when it was shown on Showtime but it was only shown in standard fullscreen and not widescreen so when I bought this widescreen DVD I rewound the tape back and taped over it with episodes of the NBC hospital drama ER. I highly recommend this DVD, the extra features could be better but at least the movie is shown in it's original aspect ratio instead of being cut so the widescreen haters won't complain about the black bars. I read an old review from some guy saying that he heard rumors about a movie remake of Logan's Run and I really don't think this movie needs to be remade but if it is being remade I hope they don't mess it up!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This IS Sanctuary!
Review: Yes it's bizzare,yes it has cheesy sets and costumes and YES
it stars Michael Work and Farrah Fawcett but I DON"T want to see
some really untalented modern day hack director come along and turn this classic into a needlessly dark,grungy Generation X
sci-fi flick!"Logan's Run" thin veneer of cheese gives it it's charm-the movie IS very well constructed and the plot is brilliant!It's message-that paradise may no be where or what one thinks is something people in this modern age should take to heart.And I actually LIKE the slightly homoerotic feel of the first half of the film.And the special effects were good in their time (unless you call todays already corny computer animation a brilliant move).Not to make a pun but for classic science fiction fans this is a movie to run to but PLEASE MODERN-DAY HOLLYWOOD;DON'T SCREW THIS UP WITH REMAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Whether you're Green, Red,or Over 30 This is Great Sci-Fi!!!
Review: Logan's Run is an excellent stylish sci-fi film from 1975 starring the great Michael York and the beautiful Jenny Agutter.
It blew my mind seeing it as an 11-year-old and was so obsessed with it my mother used to say, "He thinks everything's the 23rd century". Logan 5 (York) is a Sandman who kills runners, people who reach the age of 30, but reject the chance to Renew on Carousel. As the film begins we see the cool domed city with Jerry Goldsmith's futuristic trippy soundtrack. In this world mainly filmed in a Fort Worth mall everyone has a life-clock and when they reach 30 it starts to blink red. Those who believe in renewal attend the Last Day ritual when the 30-year-olds come out with hoods and masks, then "Identify...be strong and you will be renewed" says the female computer voice. They disrobe to reveal tights with Evel Knievel designs and start to spin around and float up and blow up to the cheers of the crowd.

Logan and his friend Francis (Richard Jordan) go on a hunt for runners killing them with fire spewing guns. Then Logan finds an Anck key and the master computer makes him search for Sanctuary by posing as a runner (some reviews of this film say Logan is 30, but he's "4-years-away", i.e. 26--York was really 32 though).

The best thing about this is the stylish futuristic designs, the great believable acting of the stars, and the off-the-wall nonsensical speech of the senile old man (Peter Ustinov). And there's some great adventure as Logan and Jessica are chased out of the city by Francis through the labyrinthine subsystems, Box the crazy robot, and a beautiful ice cave scene. And for us guys our favorite line is "we better take our clothes off before they freeze", kind of weird that they put them back on, but our wish throughout the film comes true with a quick glimpse of Jenny Agutter disrobed.

The plot itself has some serious inconsistencies. In the book the age for Renewal was 21, and the author got the idea from '60s youth culture (it was written in 1967). The idea was that youth would take over and get rid of all adults. The reason for the change to age 30 is the stars would be unbelievable as 20 year olds. You have to make many leaps over logic to suspend your disbelief here. You could say the city used this as population control. The idea of Renewal, well you can believe in reincarnation, but in this world it's implied Renewal means some scientific process controlled by the computer. When the computer tells Logan there are 1056 unaccounted for runners he says "no one's ever been renewed?!" However his conclusion cannot be logically drawn from information on unaccounted for runners.

In the cool "surrogation" scene with Logan in multiple hologram images saying "There is Noooooo Sanctuary", his answer does not compute so the city blows up....or was it his shooting the computer with his gun...or both. Here's a way to rationalize it though: the computer has a secret program to destroy the city when someone prefers life outside the dome...forget it, I gave it my best shot. And how they get outside the city to meet the old man so quickly and without a scratch on them is beyond me.

Bottom line is the film is great not because of the plot, but because of the creativity and style. It won a special academy award for special effects and it's a true classic. Michael York still gets people who come up to him telling him Logan's Run was their favorite film of his (even with all the other great roles he's had).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "There is no Sanctuary"
Review: Now that apocalyptic visions of the future are back in vogue, this movie reassumes its original "resonance" with audiences worried about population pressures and violent conflict between nations. Logan's Run was one of a very few "philosophical" science fiction movies in the pre-Star Wars era, and it has lost very little of its original punch.

The setup and surprises are so familiar that they are a part of our modern culture...if life is to be idyllic, it has a dark side, and you die young so that the domed city doesn't become overcrowded. A pre-catastrophe symbol, the "ankh", allows "runners" to signal each other and participate in the underground railroad that leads to "sanctuary" outside the domes. All does not go as planned, and Logan and Jessica find that there is nothing left of the old civilization to assist them following their escape. You know how it ends...is humanity any better off than it was before?

Unlike Star Wars, "Logan" leaves something to think about afterwards. The significance of this story is still being decided.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Would actually improve with a remake.
Review: Plot is pretty good, dialogue stilted but could be salvaged, but dear god, please get rid of those cheesy Star-Trek sets and costumes, and that horrible soundtrack. If someone really talented did this it could be extremely chilling. As it is it's about half a step up from William Shatner.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better than Cable
Review: I've seen this movie a million times but the DVD makes it even better.Check it out its got some cool featurettes on it and the trailor. This is a real treat for fans of the movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Logan's Run - A true Sci-Fi classic from the 70's!
Review: Of the many great Science Fiction movies that were released in the seventies, "Logan's Run" can definitely be counted as being among the best of them. There have been so many Science Fiction movies and novels over the years that depict either a bright or a not so bright future for humanity and many of them could've been cut right from a "cookie cutter," being the same tired story over and over yet "Logan's Run" stands out as being brilliantly different from the rest.

I vividly remember going to see this brilliant film at seven or eight years of age and having been totally enamored with the overall theme. A few years later, I read "Logan's Run," "Logan's World" and "Logan's Search" by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, all of which not only served to further this brilliant story but turned it into an extraordinary Science Fiction trilogy!

Michael York, Richard Jordan and Jenny Agutter all perform superbly in this silver screen classic! Between the films overall success, the exceptional actors and the demand for a sequel, I'm quite surprised one never followed.

If one were to make the comparison between "Logan's Run" and other big budget, extraordinary Science Fiction films of the seventies, like "Star Wars™ you could definitely say that it holds its own quite well.

The premise:

Imagine a future some two hundred years down the road where most of humanity has been wiped out leaving the remainder to build and live in domes with limited resources and the measures that would be taken to continue survival. That is the "basic" premise behind "Logan's Run." The more explicit premise is human nature at its need to expand beyond where it's at and its need to question everything.

In "Logan's Run," the society of the future has a need to limit the number of people due to limited resources, therefore when born; everyone has a life crystal placed in the palm of their hand. Run by the domes central computer, this life crystal goes through stages based on its owner's hand. At certain ages it changes colors. Upon nearing the owners thirtieth birthday it starts blinking, meaning it's nearly time for renewal. Renewal being when the respective thirty year old human is blown up quite spectacularly in a huge ceremony. For those that do not wish to end their lives, they become runners who are chased down by "Sandmen." It is the job of the Sandmen to track down runners, wherever they may go, and kill them.

Logan, who is one of the Sandmen does his job perfectly, tracking down a runner and kills him. After doing so, he removes the runner's possessions; among them is an Anck, which he does not yet know what it is. The next day, when he attempts to turn in the runner's possessions, the domes central computer asks him if he knows what the Anck is, which of course he doesn't. The central computer then effectively turns him into a runner by adding several years to his life clock and orders him to determine what and where "Sanctuary" is. Sanctuary is the mythical place where runners are trying to run to. What follows is nothing less than one of the best Science Fiction films of the seventies!

I highly recommend this film to any and all fans of the genre! {ssintrepid}

Special Features:

- Feature Length commentary by Michael York, Director Michael Anderson and costume designer Bill Thomas.
- Behind The Scenes documentary - A Look into the 23rd Century
- Remastered soundtrack in Dolby Digital 5.1
- Theatrical Trailer


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