Like half of this website's readers I'm burning through the Criterion Channel's 70s sci-fi catalogue before it expires. This is the weakest of them so far, interesting only for its classic pre-special-effects fight choreography (it takes ages for Brenner to scale a fire escape) and what it says about "era of limits" SF, when the most imaginable dystopia was a world drained of its resources. (Were they legally required to end every movie on a beach?)

You can live your life without seeing it, but you'll be denied the memory of a shirtless Yul Brenner doing martial arts in a New York wasteland.

Art was a mistake.

Why can’t every movie be like this, mutilating a story from history into a hilarious collection of slanders? Also, no spoilers, but you’ve never seen such a successful dramatic use of Emma Stone’s freakishly large eyes. 

Everyone’s amazing in this, but the MVP might be Nicholas Hoult as a dandy fop who is actually right about the war.