THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Country: USA
Director: Michael Radford
Lead Actors: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins, Kris Marshall
Running time: 138 min.
Rating: PG (Nudity)

"Pacino gives a keenly measured performance, leading an excellent British cast through their paces in a richly colorful production that should please audiences. Beautifully shot." - Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter

A Special Presentation at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, director Michael Radford’s (IL POSTINIO) accomplished adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” mines the humour of its source material with an expert hand. But the play – fuelled by passion, intergenerational misunderstanding, hypocrisy, religious intolerance and entrapment – is also a complex, disturbing work and this fiery retelling blazes with a visceral sense of atmosphere and profoundly evocative characterizations by Al Pacino (THE INSIDER), Jeremy Irons (BEING JULIA) and Joseph Fiennes (LUTHER).

In the powerful and putatively liberal city state of Venice – which Radford depicts as a rainy, smouldering maze – Shylock (Pacino) has grown wealthy through the ‘abomination’ of moneylending and faces indignity or danger when he ventures beyond the Jewish quarter.

In the same city, though in a different world, lives Antonio (Irons), a Christian merchant beset by worry over the fate of his trading vessels and his increasing isolation from his best friend Bassanio (Fiennes). The younger man has fallen in love with the beautiful Portia (emerging star Lynn Collins) and seeks to go abroad to win her hand. When Antonio, cash-strapped but still possessed of good credit, stakes Bassanio for a loan of three thousand ducats from Shylock, a bond is sealed, the risk of which is the now-proverbial pound of Antonio’s flesh.

The performances are exceptional: there is splendid chemistry between Fiennes and Collins, while Kris Marshall (LOVE ACTUALLY) exudes great aplomb as Bassanio’s friend Gratiano. Surrounding his Antonio with an aura of abject exhaustion, Irons portrays a merchant overshadowed by morbidity from the start, while Pacino brings tremendous resonance to the intricate role of Shylock, who suffers loss upon loss before reaching his breaking point.

Under Radford’s steady hand, romance, sensuality, comic subterfuge and last-minute reversals blend masterfully with the stark tragic power of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE leading inexorably to the last famous moments of Shylock’s final exile from his faith and his community.

"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." - Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail