Classic!

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2008)

I love this film and the book it was based on. I personally this should have won the Oscars in 1972 instead of the French Connection. Stanley Kubrick is my favourite director and this film is a perfect example of his work, with good acting, an excellent story and great scenes and camera-work.
The story of the film is it is set in the near future and it follows Alex, a 15-year-old boy who with his gang, rob, rape, fight and randomly attack people. They are not the only ones who do this and the country is littered with gangs and the police and government had lost control. In Alex's gang there is a power struggle and after a robbery gone wrong he was betrayed and gets arrested for murder. In prison he gets picked to become involved in experiments to prevent from committing violence acts. He is injected with a solution that makes him feel sick when thinking about violence and continues until he doesn't need the injections to be sick. When released Alex has no problems to deal with, his parents had accepted a lodger, his ex-gang members are in the police and attack him and he ends up at the home of a man whom he attacked and raped his wife in-front of him. When the man discoveries Alex's wrongdoing against him he tries to drive Alex to suicide.
The themes of the film are the fears of youth running amok. The author of the book Anthony Burgess was influenced by the Mods and Rockers of the early 60s who attacked each other and in World War 2 when US troops raped and murdered his pregnant wife. Another theme was the idea of dyspotic society and this was done in two ways. Firstly was on the ground level because people lived in fear of young men and crime was ripe. Secondly is the role of the government, using mind control experiments, arresting political opposition and using violence law and order practises and using ex-gang members in the police. The other major theme of good and evil and whether it better to be forced to be good and have no free will and no self-defence or have free choice but use it to commit bad acts.
The film does make some changes from the novel, most are minor but I think some should have been added to the film. First in the novel Alex does outgrow his violence tendencies by the age of 21 and even fathered a child. However, Kubrick probably got it right going for the darker ended. Other things that could have added to the story of film could have been showing Alex with a group of other prisoners murdering a prison and that was why Alex ended up getting picked for the experiment and Alex getting raped by his ex-gang members after he is released from prison and see they were working for the police.
This film is a classic for me and would be in my top 5.