Good, but not great. Over-rated

Rating: Null/10 (21 November 2001)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is one of Stanley Kubrick's most famous films. I feel it is tremendously flawed. It starts off beautifully, a tale of a frightening futuristic street gang led by the twisted Alex (Malcolm McDowell) The shooting is inventive (Hey, it's Kubrick) You'll want to memorize the rapid fire dialog, made up of mostly bizarre street slang. The music is beyond clever ("The Thieving MagPie" plays during a gang-fight. You have to love it!) After commiting several serious brutal crimes, the police catch Alex. When an authority figure says to Alex "Your (latest) victim has died...", the film begins to fall apart. The jokes become cheaper, the acting way too forced (Sometimes the actors seem to be waiting for Stanley to say "Cut")

One of the reasons could be that Kubrick just came off the aborted NAPOLEON project in 1970, and was looking for an alternate film. According to some of the writings on Kubrick, very little time was spent on preparing CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
But, even flawed Kubrick is much better than the average stuff out there.