PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 02/10/05)


Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice is nothing if not level. There are reasons that the play, until now, has never been adapted for film. As the literary critic Harold Bloom observed, "One would be blind, deaf, and dumb not to recognize that Shakespeare’s grand, equivocal comedy… is nevertheless a profoundly anti-Semitic work." It’s an ugly fact of the work, but as Radford shows, it’s hardly grounds for wholesale dismissal.

With the political climate of 16th-century Venice established early in the film, Radford is free to focus on the despicable natures of Shakespeare’s characters. Each seems more despicable than the next, with Shylock and Antonio battling it out for the title of "Character With the Fewest Redeeming Qualities." Bassanio, played adequately by Joseph Fiennes, is impetuous, irresponsible, and above all spoiled. Portia, played nicely by Lynn Collins, seems unable of making the distinction between the real world and the world of a sheltered little rich girl. Jeremy Irons excels at playing the hypocritical and smarmy Antonio, but it is Al Pacino’s performance as Shylock that truly makes the film worth viewing.

The familiar complaint against Pacino—that he no longer plays the character so much as plays himself playing the character—cannot be leveled here. For the duration of the movie, one is watching Shylock as opposed to Pacino doing Shylock. In the moments where it seems almost certain that he’ll capitulate to his inner hoo-ahhh (the "Hath not a Jew…" soliloquy), the actor instead reaches in and finds a method of delivery as brilliantly complex as any true rendering of the character demands. On a very basic level, Shylock is a cruel stereotype. But, as evidenced by this film, in capable hands, Shylock is a unique amalgam of flaws still worthy of rendition.

—Ryan Devlin