A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Yes. 87% of real audiences liked it based on 13,668 votes. Critics agree, scoring it 82%.

In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune? Wikipedia ↗

A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 British dystopian crime film directed by Stanley Kubrick, adapted from Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel. Malcolm McDowell stars as Alex DeLarge, a charismatic young sociopath in a near-future Britain who leads his gang of "droogs" on nightly sprees of ultraviolence — assault, robbery, and rape — narrated in Nadsat, a hybrid slang mixing English and Russian. After Alex is imprisoned for murder, he volunteers for the experimental Ludovico technique, a form of aversion therapy that conditions him to become physically ill at the thought of violence, effectively rendering him harmless but also stripping him of free will.

A Clockwork Orange was one of the most controversial films of its era, banned in several countries and ultimately withdrawn from distribution in the United Kingdom by Kubrick himself after reports of copycat violence, a ban that remained in effect until after the director's death in 1999. The film's central philosophical question — whether it is morally acceptable to strip a person of their capacity for evil if doing so also eliminates their capacity for moral choice — remains one of the most debated ethical propositions in cinema. Malcolm McDowell's performance as Alex was hypnotically charismatic, his gleeful narration and theatrical violence creating a protagonist who was simultaneously repulsive and compelling.

Kubrick's visual style employed extreme wide-angle lenses, symmetrical compositions, and the ironic counterpoint of classical music — particularly Beethoven's Ninth Symphony — against scenes of brutal violence. Walter Carlos's synthesizer arrangements of classical works established the film's uniquely unsettling sonic identity. A Clockwork Orange earned $26 million worldwide and received four Academy Award nominations.

The film's influence on punk culture, music video aesthetics, and the visual language of dystopian fiction has been immeasurable.