Not a classic, but a pretty good movie

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2016)

"A Clockwork Orannge" is a Stanley Kubrick movie from 45 years ago. It runs for 2 hours and 15 minutes and fits in nicely with its time as it was quite a psychedelic experience to watch. The film was nominated for 4 Academy Awards (3 nominations for Kubrick himself) without winning one. Lead actor Malcolm McDowell played his role very well, but "only" managed to get in at the Globes. The film is all over the place in terms of action and contents, but it is actually cleanly structured from a filmmaker's perspective. Pretty much exactly the first 45 minutes, so one third of the film, is an extended prologue. We find out about the main character's criminal activities, plus his interactions with his parents and a couple other supporting characters.
In my opinion, this first third is also the best part of the entire film. Yes it is still very shocking during everything that follows later on, if not more shocking even, but I personally felt in terms of dramatic impact the film left on me, the first 45 minutes are when this film really shines. If you decide to watch the movie, make sure you are not easily offended as there are some pretty graphic sequences in terms of torture, some of them with McDowell's character as the offender, others with him as the victim. A whole lot of the film is about his (forced) positive (?) character transformation, but I cannot say that I enjoyed this part as much as I wanted to, even if there are some interesting parallels occasionally to our world. This one is set in the future obviously and plays in dystopian Britain. A very different kind of science fiction of course compared to all these space-set role model films from that genre.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie and McDowell's performance, even if I must admit I felt it got a bit less interesting the longer it went. Kubrick probably could have cut 20-30 minutes and it would have been an even better film if he had chosen only scenes from the second half of these 135 minutes. Nonetheless, it's an interesting watch for its absurdity and the Orwellian setting of this entire thing. Recommended.