It said a few think about society but nothing new. I know people are evil. I know institutions can be hypocritical, experimental and evil. I know about gang mentality. What's left? The only interesting moment was the family dynamic after Alex was released and that only lasted one scene. Alex wasn't even a complex character like he could have been. He goes from sick to cured to victim with nothing interesting in terms of actual personality - oh but he likes beethoven, yeah great. This is structured more like a fairy tale than a movie for grown ups. This movie seems to have the view that the hypocrisy of power and violence is genuinely interesting and clever enough to base an entire movie on. Clever social predication? Hardly. Maybe about a degenerate society but many movies predict that as a usual plot idea. I'm sure people don't care as much in those cases. What about all the wrong predictions? Where are all the posh talking kids listening to beethoven and raping? What was the logic behond that anyway?? Why does the future still look like the 70s?
What bugs me is the arty veneer to try and give some intellectualism. Beneath the flesh, boundary pushing violence for the time and nonsensical classical music (especially the edgy Nazi beethoven scene), it's a very basic story. It's not Alex or the violence that bothers me but the fact it's shallow and overrated