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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 80.11%
Worth A Look: 10.75%
Average: 2.69%
Pretty Bad: 3.23%
Total Crap: 3.23%
5 reviews, 156 user ratings
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| Clockwork Orange, A |
by Matt Mulcahey
"A true rarity: A great book transformed into a great movie"

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Stanley Kubrick’s seminal masterpiece A Clockwork Orange truly deserves the status of classic. But not because of Kubrick’s masterful blend of music and visuals, John Barry’s opulent, razor-sharp production design, John Alcott’s exquisite, unmistakably Kubrickian cinematography or Malcolm McDowell’s perfect performance.It is the film’s ability to remain relevant that earns A Clockwok Orange a place among cinema’s greatest achievements. With the statistic recently published that one in 32 American adults is in some stage of the correctional system, Kurbick’s dissection of free will versus the betterment of society, personal rights versus order and the individual versus dehumanizing conformity is even more thought provoking and immediate today than it was thirty years ago.
McDowell plays young hooligan Alex DeLarge, an outwardly pleasant young man with an affinity for Mozart who spends his nights, along with his three droogs Dim, Georgie and Pete, robbing, raping and dishing out a bit of the old ultra-violence to young and old, rich and poor alike. But these Droogs, rebelling against a society they detest, soon rebel against the order instilled by Alex as leader, betraying him and landing Alex a 14-year stay in prison for accidentally murdering a woman with a large ceramic penis.
Alex becomes a pawn of both the government and those who oppose the government when, two years into his sentence, he volunteers to undergo the new Ludivico technique. The revolutionary cure, for all intent and purpose, brainwashes and re-programs criminals to react to sex and violence with a severe sickness. It’s simple Pavlovian cause and effect: Every time Alex feels even the slightest impulse towards brutality or sexuality, he becomes overwhelming nauseous.
A Clockwork Orange asks the question “What are we willing to give up for a better life?” Is trading in our right to choose good or evil too high a price to pay if it means the elimination of violence, hate and crime? Or would that simply make us a society of clockwork oranges, flesh and blood men on the outside but, inside, soulless machines pre-programmed to respond.As America’s prisons cramp from overcrowding and newscasts are dominated by terrorists and child abductions, Kubrick’s probing conundrum “What liberty would you give up for a quieter, more peaceful existence?” remains unanswered, though the question has never been more relevant.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1382&reviewer=255 originally posted: 09/17/02 16:55:28
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Philadelphia Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Philadelphia Film Festival series, click here.
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USA 02-Feb-1972 (R)
UK N/A
Australia 02-Jul-1972 (R)
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