An Ingenious Work Of Art---A brilliant portrayal of an youthful society gone wrong in this Stanley Kubrick masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2003)

This film was not for the faint of heart when it was released in theatres in 1971. This was the third film that Warner Brothers released that was in fact given an strict "X" rating by the Motion Picture Association Of America since the other two that were "X" rated from the studio were Mike Nichols'"Who Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?",which won the Oscar in 1966 for best Actress for Elizabeth Taylor,and the other was the 1969 graphically violent western of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine.
"A Clockwork Orange",was the first film Stanley Kubrick directed for the studio and would remained with Warners for his next to last films which included "Barry Lyndon"(1975),"The Shining"(1980),"Full Metal Jacket",(1987),and his final film,"Eyes Wide Shut"(1999) with Tom Cruise. Before he went into this production,which took two years to make,was still flying high after the huge commercial and critical success of his 1968 science fiction masterpiece,"2001:A Space Odyssey" based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke. This time around he went even further into detail into his next film,which would become a cult favorite among the college circuit and one of the top ten strangest films ever made. Based on the graphic novel by Anthony Burgess,"A Clockwork Orange",is "ingenious Kubrick at his finest" with a science fiction parable that is a "bold","nightmarish","frightening",and sometimes "unexpected".
This was in fact a mix of "sexual content","ultraviolence",and "mind control",set in a freaky futuristic Britain which follows the travails of a "unhinged" misunderstood and explicitly violent individual who is the ringleader of a gang of teenage youths and one hellva "bad boy" who in fact is very "sinister" yet "strangely likable" who is misguided by his command of a vicious street gang of "droogies" who robbed and destroy society as a whole. Through his chilling crimes of the unthinkable to his "brainwashing" rehab,it threads "brilliant visuals" and "twisted" social satire into riveting "artful stuff"-helped by the bit of the old Ludwig van in the role that made a major star of British actor Malcolm McDowell into an international status under the direction of Kubrick. Before "Clockwork Orange",McDowell was already a bonafide star from his last picture,which was ultraviolent within itself two years earlier in the political-social thriller "If".
Even some 40 years after the film's release,it is to see why it still holds vividity still today. Worth seeing.