"Horoshiy Malchik" Malcolm McDowell

Rating: 10/10 (27 November 2006)

"He is enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, and vicious. He'll do" - and that's exactly whom Malcolm McDowell played in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork orange" (1971).
It is not easy to work with a genius (and this is genius at work here, no doubt. Nobody does it like Kubrick and we will never see his like again.) No matter how many roles Malcolm McDowell has played he will be thought of and always compared to the sadistic Ludwig Van's fan, a Clockwork orange from Stanley Kubrick's timeless masterpiece. Based on Alex, McDowell was invited to play Caligula in notoriously scandalous 1979 biography of the mad Roman Emperor. Watching McDowell playing Guy Cesar Caligula, one can only imagine that the movie could've been a masterpiece  McDowell plays the same Alex who was born 2000 years ago and for three years had an access to the Absolute Power that had absolutely corrupted him. Well, as we all know, "Caligula" is not exactly a masterpiece but it does not make McDowell's work in the movie any less interesting.
For me, though, the favorite McDowell's performance is everyman Mick Travis from Lindsay Anderson's stunning "O Lucky Man!" the young man with a conquering irresistible smile who just wanted to succeed.
I watched "Clockwork Orange" a few weeks ago and thought that I would mention Malcolm McDowell. Yes, the film is the product of Kubrick's cosmic vision and inhuman talent but without McDowell it would not have been the same.