A more realistic "Clockwork Orange"

Rating: Null/10 (6 September 2001)

I don't know how many viewers of this movie (or non-viewers who are just reading these comments) have read Anthony Burgess'"A Clockwork Orange" with the 21st chapter, but in that chapter, it shows that it's a "Coming of Age" story when Your Humble Narrator, Alex, doesn't have his heart in the things he used to do anymore. He's no longer into it.
If you take out the rhetoric about personal choice, then this excellently-done movie is quite parallel to that plot:
The surrounding story is that Edward Norton's character, Derek, was a bad guy who turned his life around in prison and is now trying to stop his brother (who idolizes him) from making the same mistakes, which gives us the premise of all the flashback scenes/Clockwork Orange plot.
You see all the scenes of Derek being "not just A skinhead but THE skinhead" and all the rhetorics he preaches that sometimes start off seemingly intelligent but always go downhill from there and ultimately into utter chaos and disorder. Alex from "Clockwork Orange" is a gang leader, too, and they all go out and steal cars, beat up bums, and create other chaos and disorder.
In both stories, the title character goes to jail for over two years.
Alex in Clockwork Orange had the Ludevico Technique to "rehabilitate" and release him and, unfortunately for him, show him what it was like on the other end of the atrocities he used to commit. Derek was apparently White, but while in jail, he was a "minority" and it was clear that without any kind of "friends", it meant big trouble if he was caught by his lonesome (to put it nicely).
Both characters have some leader-figure to help them while they're in the slammer: Alex had the prison chaplin and Derek had the school teacher. Both characters also have horrible things done to them by people who were once their friends.
At the end of it all, they are "cured" of what they were before jail (Although Derek didn't have to be cured of the first "Cure").
As I said, the plot is not original, but it is excellently done.
By the way, the ending is hugely tragic, to say the least. So see this movie for a better version of the "Clockwork Orange" plot but be prepared for the ending.
That's a wrap.