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| Malcolm McDowell as the resilient Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's bizarre cult epic O LUCKY MAN! Year: 1973 Rating: **** |
Typecast as an offbeat lunatic, Malcolm McDowell is the Anthony Perkins of England, and O LUCKY MAN is to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE what Orson Welles' THE TRIAL is to PSYCHO... as McDowell's more breezy, earthy and naïve Mick Travis tours England in a road movie dotted with just about every quirky/dreamlike bulwark imaginable...
Ranging from bearing witness to a lethal auto accident to a nuclear power plant's time-ticking emergency meltdown to a rural hospital using humans as lab rats (or pig-sheep), McDowell is, once again, the perfect cinematic pawn...
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| Malcolm McDowell in O LUCKY MAN! |
And he's always moving, slithering about and searching, even while bedded/seduced by a string of women: from the coffee company boss (Rachel Roberts) to a Vicar's wife (Mary MacLeod), to lead ingenue Helen Mirren as a rich girl groupie of Alan Price's band — the latter providing a groovy Roman Chorus throughout...
At first jamming inside a studio separate from the action, both worlds eventually converge, providing our wandering nomad a literal ride that eventually eradicates the linear salesman story. But, alas, the second half... while remaining a dark/deranged attack on the senses... gathers moss, often seeming weird for the sake of weirdness...
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| Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
All this following a rather clumsy anti-corporate message as Travis becomes part of Mirren's father's billion dollar business, idealistically relating to director Lindsay Anderson's politically-charged IF... where McDowell's Mick Travis is introduced as a more sharpened student revolutionary in a boarding school run by sadistic boy-loving bullies...
But here he's a spontaneous and optimistic deer-in-headlights, like only McDowell can pull off... in complete control of having no control... crossing paths with an assortment of bizarre characters, often played by the same actors and actresses, making O LUCKY MAN more a collection of skits than a singular epic-length motion picture. Yet it's that too.
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Tom Courtenay picture? in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Bottom is A CLOCKWORK ORANGE homage in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! with Christine Noonan |
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| Alan Price as Alan Price in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Jeremy Bulloch in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! w/ Alan Price |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| A young Helen Mirren in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! w/ T-Rex posters |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| O Lucky Man two-disc DVD signed by Malcolm McDowell |
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| Alan Price with his Orange Amp jamming in O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| James Bolam behind Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork style experiment from O Lucky Man! |
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| Malcolm McDowell and O LUCKY MAN director Lindsay Anderson |
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| Malcolm McDowell and O LUCKY MAN director Lindsay Anderson |
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| Malcolm McDowell and O LUCKY MAN director Lindsay Anderson |
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| Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's O LUCKY MAN! |
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| O Lucky Man! directed by Lindsay Anderson/conceived by Anderson and Malcolm McDowell |
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| Malcolm McDowell in O LUCKY MAN! |
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