Director: Lindsay Anderson
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 2.0
Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), fresh out of school (you remember the one: they were trying to assassinate people) takes a job as a coffee salesman but gets arrested by some militant faction, escapes, gets kidnapped by some deranged doctors, escapes, gets imprisoned by the British Government, is freed ... and did I mention this has to do with modern living, the horrors of capitalism and that whole lot? The casting of actors to play multiple roles adds to the surrealism and I can kind of see what Anderson and David Sherwin had in mind - so much of success depends on the combination of tenacity and luck (as it did for McDowell as an actor or anyone who "makes it big") - but as with Britannia Hospital they're really trying to do too much and the focus simply isn't there, plus there's a glibness to the third act that works on the nerves. If.... worked because it made school a microcosm of the world - this tries to take the world and dismiss it in three hours. The music interludes with Alan Price are a distraction.
