Critics reviews

Burgess's haunted memories and, at times, guilt, hung over the picture like some kind of Kubrickian bi-proxy (whose own family would be threatened because of the movie, according to Kubrick's wife), mirroring why it's so powerful and enduring, upsetting and exciting. Why it gives you a rush and slaps you down, and almost guiltily, lifts you back up – a brilliant, sexy, disgusting, funny, violent political satire that thrills and sickens.

Surprised to discover that all the stuff I recalled with awe is in the first 20 minutes; so what happens in the other 120? Not a lot, it turns out, the final hour - after Alex is released - being especially dreary, and not even totally convincing thematically. Still a very striking texture, which explains why it's hard to shake; but there's not much beneath the flashy trappings.

If Dr. Strangelove is Stanley Kubrick on Mad Magazine, Clockwork is Stanley Kubrick on Zap! Comix, or something like that... There's so much here that's dispiriting, puzzling; there's an amazing amount of bravura, too-bravura, filmmaking done in the service of a vision so narrow and monochromatic that it's almost…hell, I don't know what it is.

It manifests on the screen as a painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy. The first third splashes out of a wide-angle lens like a madly mod picture-spread for Look magazine where Kubrick toiled briefly long, long ago. The middle third provides a moderately engrossing indictment of B. F. Skinnerism in action. But the last third of the movie is such a complete bore that even audiences of confirmed Kubrickians have drowned out smatterings of applause with prolonged hissing.

The result is Kubrick comedy, the subtle distortions quickly accumulating into surrealism to which the characters respond with earnest solemnity.