A masterpiece in ultra-violence

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2006)

How should violence be presented in a movie, for maximum impact? Should as many people as possible be killed? Should people be killed in as extreme ways as possible? Should the violence be as detailed and gory as possible? Big explosions? Exessive use of firing machine guns?
No. Limit the effects and make it realistic, and the violence will go to the heart and be really nasty. Less is more. This movie is frightening, horrible, despite the fact that you never see much. It is frightening in the same was as Hitchcock's movies were frightening. Even a simple thing as the gang beating up a man is significant, not because of the pain they inflict (which is limited) but because they do it for fun.
The gang, Alex in particular, are close and still distant. You see the world though their twisted eyes. You get all their motives and still they have none.
When I left the movie with my friends, nobody spoke for several minutes. We had seen something very different and tried to grasp what it really was. That alone is a good sign. And what we had seen was a masterpiece.