William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice Critic Reviews

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.Read the full review

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

The reason to see The Merchant of Venice is Al Pacino.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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