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“Which side will you be on?”

The prefects of the Upper Sixth run an English boys' boarding school by cruelty, while the teachers keep their distance and let them. Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), Wallace (Richard Warwick) and Johnny Knightly (David Wood), three boys from the Lower Sixth, settle on a course of action to redress the balance of privilege for good. Lindsay Anderson, directing McDowell in his first film, sets the boys against a school that holds all the power.