A single idea, buried under surface activity

Rating: 4/10 (1 March 2008)

I've never been a big fan of this movie. I'm indifferent to the violence which I find unconvincing and comical. Instead I find the movie to be so ridiculously streamlined that for all it's outrageousness, just ends up feeling like a children's story, underscoring its moral over and over. Kubrick has reduced the whole production to a schematic argument with no real detail. There's just nothing else to consider in the movie except a singular, remedial idea about free will. Two hours and 16 minutes is way too much time to be this ideoogically barren. The first part proceeds rapidly enough, but the obvious developments after the Ludovico treatment drag unmercifully. How could Kubrick make 2001, which is teeming with ideas, and then go on to make this?
Its provocations are way over the top as unrefined minds prefer. Patrick McGeehan's grotesque hamming is the most unsubtle thing in a very unsubtle movie. I suspect guys talk themselves into this being a masterpiece in their horny, rebellious teens, then spend the rest of their lives never thinking about it again; continuing to defend their initial position and premature rave. There's nothing going on in this movie. it's like watching a juggler with one ball. Kubrick further undermines his art and the shock of the violence by getting too much titillation out of it; his rape victims are always attractive women with supermodel figures and enormous, spherical breasts. How many nitwits would be raving about this movie is even one of the chicks was out of shape?