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Logan's Run Logan's Run
1976
Reviewer: Richard Tara
Director: Michael Anderson
Cast: Michael York, Richard Jordan, Jenny Agutter, Roscoe Lee Browne, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Anderson Jr.

The movie is set in the 23rd Century, many years after an Armageddon that has destroyed most of the planet and the people living on it. A group of descendants of survivors live in an underground domed city with artificial lighting and all the amenities. A master computer controls the climate and the food ecosystem. The inhabitants are totally unaware that there is a world outside their subterranean environment. They have a gay hedonistic life. When a person reaches thirty, a little crystal lights up in their palm. This is the time for rejuvenation and rebirth as a new person. During a joyful ceremony people over 30 are happily vaporized to be reborn.

As in any society, there are some malcontents who do not believe in this artificial renewal of life and try to escape to a place known as the Sanctuary. They are knows as runners and are dealt with severely by Sandmen who are a special police force trained and armed to capture and kill the escapees.

Logan 5 (Michael York) is a Sandman who is selected to go undercover to penetrate the non-believers to find and block their secret escape route. To make his story plausible, the computer turns his aging crystal on. Little does Logan know that this process is irreversible. He becomes involved with Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) who is hoping to escape and in the process becomes a suspected runner and the target of his ex-friend and sandman Francis 7 (Richard Jordan) who believes he is a runaway.

Logan and Jessica, followed by Francis 7 in hot pursuit, eventually reach the outside world which has been purified after so many decades. They are surprised to find domestic animals, abundant plant life, and cities overgrown with vegetation. They even come across an eccentric old man (Peter Ustinov.) Logan and his girl decide to go back and let their fellow citizens know about this new world.

The movie has deep religious or, if you’d care, anti-religious undertones. Eventual Rejuvenation, and living forever, has paralleled our spiritual beliefs and thinking since the Stone Age. We, as thinking creatures, have always been obsessed with fear of dying and have fantasized a variety of afterlife scenarios. Some of us go to heaven or hell. Some believe in reincarnation and some in life in a different dimension. The Greeks had the river Styx and Hades and most of us have not progressed beyond that point, except the atheists who are even more religious than the rest of us by dogmatically believing in non-believing.

When this movie came out, many movie critics even Roger Ebert considered it a Sci-Fi. They did not fathom the deeper meaning of the story. What makes this movie so unique is not the acting or directing, which is acceptable but not superb. Michael York, Jennie Agutter and Peter Ustinov were good actors but not that great. Michael Anderson directed this movie. He had many movies and made for TV films to his credit, none to distinguish him as a world class director.

The importance of this movie is the story and how it was relayed played seamlessly to parallel our own world. Forget the futuristic timeline and concentrate on the story and how it develops. Next relate it to any major religion. Then, you will sense an intensely religious movie, but not in the traditional sense though.

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