There is not a lot to say about Logan's Run. It's boring until about half-way through, spending too much time establishing an uninteresting setting. Then it becomes whimsical, which is a little more fun yet equally confusing. It does not present a story we can believe in, but it does give us a handful of captivating moments.

It is the year 2274. Those who have survived the years of war, pollution, and overpopulation have retreated into giant dome-cities, where they live forced though readily-accepted utopian lives and wear goofy clothes. At the age of thirty, they go through a pyrotechnical ceremony in which they are supposedly reborn. Our main character is, a "sandman" whose job it is to track down and kill "runners" trying to escape the city in order to avoid renewal. Logan becomes suspicious, as these runners apparently are, that perhaps this "rebirth" is a big scam and that the thirty-year-olds are simply being killed, possibly to keep the utopia in balance. So, he decides to become a runner himself and brings along a pretty girl named Jessica.

The first half of the movie is spent setting up the situation and bringing the city to life. This would not be bad if there happened to be something interesting going on. The futurism of this world is silly, and the special effects are transparent. The wide shots of the city itself clearly reveal a scaled-down model city, and the energy blasts from firearms are simply sparks that most often explode from the floor or wall around whomever is being shot at. In one absurd scene, two sandmen fire repeatedly at a single runner who is standing still. It takes about ten shots for them to finally hit him. In the meantime, sparks fly within millimeters of his body and feet, like an expert knife thrower showing how close he can come without hitting someone. Likewise, the relationship between Logan and Jessica is only minutely interesting and is blown over so that it can get to serving the plot. It is all tiresome unless you have never seen a science fiction film.

The ability to make it through this hour does have a few rewards. While escaping the city, the two find their way into an ice area, complete with frozen penguins and seagulls. After they decide to take their clothes off and put on the animal skins they find (don't ask me; I'm just the messenger), they meet a creepy, poetic robot who repeats variations of this line: "Fish, and plankton, and sea-greens, and protein from the sea," as part of his explanation of why his area houses frozen animals and humans. It may not sound remarkable, but after the fourth time he repeats the phrase, it becomes distinctly sinister, in a surrealistic way.

When they finally escape the dome (this isn't a spoiler; it happens in the middle of the film), they, for the first time, see a giant, warming ball of light in the sky. When this scene comes, and they are in a world complete with waterfalls, forests, deserts, and the remains of civilization, the confinement of their dome is fully realized. In this context, the water and the plant life around them have a truly liberating effect on the viewer.

Throw in an old hermit quoting lines from T.S. Eliot, and a scene of "multiple surrogation," in which multiple selves of Logan on multiple holographic monitors simultaneously discuss whether a sanctuary exists for successful runners, and you have a pretty fun experience. The ending, however, reverts to the cheesiness so prevalent in the first half of the film and is unbelievable (in a bad way) for multiple reasons.

There are times when the film addresses the unoriginal albeit important need to question society. There are times when it demonstrates the impossibility of pure utopia. For those to whom these concerns are novel, the gaudiness of the futurism drowns everything out anyway. The weird scenes later on, though, seem to effect some feeling that goes beyond simply weird. As much as I recommend viewing these scenes, I cannot recommend the film as a whole. This is a movie that alternates between the sleep-inducing and the hypnotic, with not enough emphasis on the hypnotic.