I've reconsidered my previous review...

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2008)

WARNING: ONLY AN INSANE AND IRRESPONSIBLE PARENT WOULD LET THEIR KIDS SEE THIS FILM!! SERIOUSLY!
I originally gave this film a very low score but have reconsidered it after having read the Anthony Burgess novel and then seen the movie again. The Burgess novel is brilliant but necessarily violent given the subject matter. I still think that Stanley Kubrick really lost his way in this film because he increased the level of violence and especially nudity--making the film, at time, almost like a sex film. This was just gratuitous and seemed highly reminiscent of NATURAL BORN KILLERS--a film that was just too graphic and needlessly trivialized violence. However, despite Kubrick's overindulgence, the film is pretty good and reasonably close to the novel--and I appreciated this greatly. Plus, I liked Malcolm McDowell's nice performance.
First, let's talk about the overindulgence that keep me from seeing this as a brilliant film (despite popular opinion--after all, it's #49 on the IMDb top 250). The book never had such graphic rape scenes and that much sex. In Kubrick's vision, the story is more about sex than violence much of the time--completely missing the point of Burgess' novel. Adding rapes and making many of the scenes so very graphic just seemed unnecessary and make this an adults-only film that easily earned the X rating (today it clearly would be an NC-17 film). Plus, Kubrick's need for over-indulgence made the film seem more like a Ken Russell film--just unnecessarily crude with statues of Jesus with an erect penis, the character Alex beating to death a woman with a giant penis and testicles statue (the original way she dies in the book was much better--funny and ironic) and many, many scenes of graphic non-violent nudity that were not even in the book. Oddly, despite the many depravities, Kubrick chose not to include an attempt by one of Alex's roommates to sexually abuse him--an odd omission considering everything else.
Now if you can manage to watch the film and ignore how over the top it is compared to the book, you will be happy that most of the scenes in the book are still there (though, as I think, with a few unnecessary additions). Plus, much of the spirit of Burgess' excellent novel is present--along with Alex's clever narration. On the very positive side, the movie is based on the American version of the novel not the original British one (which is odd, as Kubrick loved the UK and didn't think much of his home country according to most reports). In the British version, there was a final unnecessary chapter in which, by Alex was in his early 20s and he was essentially cured--wanting to become a productive citizen practically overnight. While a redemption is possible, having it happen so young and so quickly with such a hard-core sociopath didn't make any sense at all and undid most of the book. Leaving Alex an unrepentant and vile individual had much greater impact.
By the way, it's never really said but I thought it was implied in both the book and film that after Alex's attempted suicide, doctors de-programmed him--possibly by employing psychosurgery or more conditioning techniques. I spoke to a friend who never noticed this--yet he LOVED the book. What did you think about Alex's transformation following this attempt?
Overall, a very good version of the Burgess book but also way too sexually explicit--limiting the movie's audience and possibly encouraging rape and violence instead of being a tale about totalitarianism and behavioral conditioning.