Explicit savagery as implicit satire

Rating: 6/10 (14 October 2007)

Delinquent youth in the not-so-distant future of Britain is captured after a bout of rape and murder and becomes part of a rehabilitation experiment set up by the government; changed, presumably for the better, he's sent back to the streets, possibly unprepared for what awaits him. Cannily-made apocalypse-comedy from writer-director Stanley Kubrick, who is often very sly regarding his position on this material (he's a tricky filmmaker who doesn't at all mind changing the rules on his audience, playing them for a fool in the process). Kubrick, who is as much the star here as leading actor Malcolm McDowell, is alternately decadent, dazzling, pretentious and juvenile (some of his technical gimmicks and sexual jabs aren't as pointed as they're meant to be). The film doesn't attempt to solve the sometimes confounding cinematic connection between (and the curious lure of) violence and sex--and I'm not a big fan of the queasy mixed with the satirically sensational--yet after a few reels of this stuff, you're ready for Kubrick to change gears (and, in the third act, he does). Adapted from the cult book by Anthony Burgess, Kubrick lets the meaning of the story's title slip away within this medium--yet nothing is carelessly done, out of reach or out of bounds for Kubrick. He's meticulously menacing, and those who respond gleefully to the film are most likely subjects he would have eventually studied. **1/2 from ****