Not usually a fan of Kubrick.......

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 2001)

I am not personally a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick. I had a hard time sitting through both '2001' and 'Dr.Strangelove'. All though, I have only seen both of those films once, I didn't feel that there was enough there for me to have multiple viewings. So when I sat down to watch this film, I wanted to like it, and surprisingly I did.
First of all, Malcolm McDowell is excellent in this film. However, Kubrick always gets excellent performances from his actors, and this has never been a problem for me.
More importantly, the pacing of this film was much quicker than most of his other films. His other works seem to me to have a deliberately slow pace, but with the exception of about twenty or so minutes in the middle of the film, the pacing was excellent.
I won't go into the details of the script. It was very clever and well done, and had a very circular approach to it that I rather enjoyed. Plus it was very original back when it was made, and holds that originality until today. It has standout scenes that I will remember for the rest of my life, and that is always the sign of a fantastic film. Specifically, I will remember an early scene with the use of Malcolm McDowell doing 'Singing in the Rain'. Very shocking, and it is hard to shock me at this point because I thought I had seen it all.
So with memorable scenes, a script that tackles many issues, for instance morality and ethics, just to name a couple, this is a film that you should check out at least once. It wasn't perfect in my opinion, but if I watch it again I may change my mind. But still, 9 out of 10.