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Merchant of Venice, The
Sony Pictures Classics


7.0

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 21 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for some nudity

Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins, Zuleikha Robinson, Kris Marshall, Charlie Cox, and Mackenzie Crook

Set in the lavish era of 16th century Italy, The Merchant of Venice follows the interlocking lives of a captivating assortment of Shakespearean characters in this story wrought with morality, revenge, redemption and love. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Michael Radford William Shakespeare (play)
DIRECTED BY:	Michael Radford
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 10, 2005 Theatrical: December 29, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	138 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Italy / Luxembourg / UK

Also known as "William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

100

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 21 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Brandon S. gave it an8:
Excellent adaptation. It has a few slow moments and the comedic aspects generally pale in comparison to the drama, but that is more than made up for by the brilliant performances and excellent directing.

Richard B. gave it a9:
This is an extraordinarily difficult play to produce. This production will literally set the bar for the 21st Century. Pacino is unforgettable, the casting is accurate generally, the photography inspired. Stunning.

Ilze S. gave it a5:
Movie was almost good. Book is far better.About costumes:"The Phantom Of The Opera" is far better,like costume drama. Music is good, sometimes movie is slow. I hoped for better adaption.

Julie L. gave it a7:
Pacino's performance is so stunning, and his Shylock so sympathetic, that you wonder what all the other simple-minded dopes are prancing around about. Jeremy Irons, who is so much better than Hollywood lets him be, continues to agonize about his pinched and naked flesh, and the thwarted lovers are just boring. By the end scene, with all the revelations about hidden identities, and the giggling "Aha's!", all I wanted to do was see where Pacino had gone and how Shylock was doing. Problem is, the play only works if Shylock really deserves his fate and is disliked - and the movie doesn't quite work because Pacino is SO good. But if you can enjoy Pacino's powerful portrayal of a much more sympathetic Shylock, and the absolutely gorgeous costuming and scenes of Venice, then it will certainly be worth any modest DVD rental price.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
Beautifuly executed, and bravely dealing with issues of predjudice in a compelling and in my opinion true to the intentions of Shakespeare's work. Fantastic performances from Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and a fun Joseph Fiennes.

Mark B. gave it a7:
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that, while three major film adaptations of William Shakespeare's Hamlet have seen U.S. release in the past 15 years, nobody to my knowledge has tried a film version of his most controversial and problematic play--until now. It's also no shock that Michael Radford, a filmmaker known both for seizing opportunities and taking chances, is the one who finally brought it to the screen. (He was prescient enough to remake George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984, and his 1991 multiple Oscar nominee Il Postino was enough of a mainstream foreign-language hit to pave the way for such non-English-speaking smashes as Life Is Beautiful and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a few years later.) You simply can't get around the truth that this piece--as entertaining and suspenseful as it unquestionably is, and as much gorgeous romantic poetry as it features--is as unapologetically anti-Semitic as D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation is racist. (Let's hope that neither Radford nor anyone else tries to remake THAT one!) It didn't help matters very much that I saw this in a theater the same weekend that I rewatched both The Life of Emile Zola and Schindler's List on DVD, but the reality is that Shakespeare's audience wasn't ours, and this material was as unquestioningly accepted in its day as were Stepin Fetchit's and Willie Best's hideously written distortions of African-American men were in otherwise often very good Hollywood films of the 1930s and early 1940s. Other than including a brief prologue that explains some of the historic context, and shows Jewish moneylender Shylock being ostracized (and worse) by the larger community, Radford doesn't try to modify or apologize for the material, so the ball is mostly in Al Pacino's court. He responds with a portrayal of Shylock that's deeply empathetic and richly full-bodied--but, compared to his work in, say, Scarface and Devil's Advocate, quite effectively subtle and restrained. Perhaps the key to enduring, if not completely enjoying Merchant in these times lies not in political correctness but in pop psychology: as Richard Carlson and Dr. Phil would undoubtedly (and accurately) point out, Pacino's Shylock's bitterness, however justified, runs so deep that in the final analysis he's totally incapable of ever being happy, peaceful or satisfied whether he gets his pound of flesh (or anything else) or not, so maybe it's best for the law to resolve the situation with as little total damage as possible. If you can watch Radford's Merchant of Venice from that standpoint, perhaps it's possible to appreciate it for what it is: a remarkably handsome presentation of a clever, engrossing courtroom drama.

Patrick S. gave it an8:
A brilliant adaptation of one of Shakespeares most contreversial, yet uneventful plays. Pacino is the fire that creates depth to a rather dull script.

Merchant of Venice, The Sony Pictures Classics

Merchant of Venice, The
Sony Pictures Classics