Merchant of Venice, The

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A lean, stripped-down and unapologetically cinematic take on Shakespeare's work, an adaptation designed at each turn to diminish the mechanics of the comedy and to explore the depths of the pathos.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

Radford has made a gripping, highly cinematic adaptation of a gorgeous work of theater.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Collins and Pacino plumb the depths of acting, of Shakespeare, of the difference between law and justice.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Pacino shows you what is only subliminally in the text: that Shylock's heart of stone is really a wall of wounded pride.

Time Richard Corliss

Pacino seems to recall, from his early Michael Corleone days, the power of whispered menace.

Slate David Edelstein

This Merchant of Venice comes roaring to life--when it stops, in effect, apologizing for its terrible anti-Semitic worldview and just gives itself over to some of the most furious courtroom drama ever written.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Pacino gives a keenly measured performance, leading an excellent British cast through their paces in a richly colorful production that should please selective audiences and adds to the list of major film adaptations of Shakespeare's work.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

What Radford above all accomplishes in his filming of The Merchant of Venice is to suggest that, in essence, it is that most modern of entertainments: a dark - indeed, very dark - comedy.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

To watch this movie is to not only appreciate the majesty of Shakespeare's poetics but to engage in a profound, subtextual dialogue with bigotry.

Chicago Tribune Sid Smith

An important, timeless and sometimes troublesome classic has been filmed successfully and at long last.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Pacino has done more Shakespeare than any other currently bankable movie star, he has a feel for the language and he lends a genuine grandeur to Shylock's big speech of self-defense.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It has greatness in moments, and is denied greatness overall only because it is such a peculiar construction; watching it is like channel-surfing between a teen romance and a dark abysm of loss and grief.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Given the story's focus on religion and the intolerance that still rages in today's world, The Merchant of Venice remains deeply meaningful.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The reason to see The Merchant of Venice is Al Pacino.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film itself occasionally plods, but Pacino, tackling a tough trap of a role, raises the bar in a mesmerizing acting triumph.

Variety David Rooney

Despite a series of disclaimers about the treatment of Jews in the 16th century, there's even less disguising onscreen than onstage that this is an uncomfortably anti-Semitic play and somewhat problematic for contempo audiences.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Btter-than-average screen Shakespeare: intelligent without being showily clever, and motivated more by genuine fascination with the play's language and ideas than by a desire to cannibalize its author's cultural prestige.

Washington Post Philip Kennicott

As cinematic storytelling, it works.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Overall this is an intelligent and thoughtful reading of the play, marred only by the implausibility of Portia.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

What Radford has retained of the original, he treats warmly and intelligently, and with a few welcome surprises in the acting. But he has produced a different work, moderately successful in itself, out of materials provided by Shakespeare.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Intriguing but ultimately unfulfilling.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Even though it largely succeeds in putting a civil face on some unpalatable material, it lacks the heat and suppleness of the best Shakespeare on film.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice may help in bringing some of the Bard's language to life, but this rendition is hardly a freshman course.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It makes for quite a rumpus, but the material never catches fire.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Shakespeare's rich language does not fit soundly inside every mouth.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

When the halves of the film collide in the courtroom climax, it looks like a misbegotten pilot for Law & Order: Usury Victims Unit.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Pacino simply wipes the cobblestones with the rest of the cast: His beautifully calibrated performance is lucid, commanding, and genuinely tragic.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

There are too many rancors--hatred of life, hatred of others, hatred of their means to happiness--to contend with here, and the loveliness of the verse beats fruitlessly against them, as if against a wharf.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Taking one's pound of flesh and having it, too, leads to a queasy comedy in which Pacino burns a hole in the screen while the frivolity around him sputters.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Not even a compelling performance by Al Pacino as Shylock can make The Merchant of Venice work in its first major big-screen adaptation.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Uncomfortable as the film is, it's a beautiful, sensuous experience.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

In this exquisitely filmed adaptation Pacino is as vivid a Shylock as we're likely to see. Despite all the scholarly excuses for this drama, though, it's shot through with outrageously anti-Semitic attitudes.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

It all collapses under an atrocious performance by Pacino, whose laughably bad accent and scene-chewing delivery serve up thick slabs of that rarest of delicacies: Jewish ham. There may be grounds here for a class-action lawsuit.

Film Threat Phil Hall

The single worst Shakespeare film ever made.