Al Pacino has started receiving raves for his role as Shylock, Shakespeare’s beleagured moneylender, in Michael Radford‘s Merchant of Venice. (Those of us who majored in English but slept through Shakespeare had to remind ourselves of the plotline.) Shylock, an old, greedy Jew created out of existing stereotypes of the day, demands a “pound of flesh” from a Venetian merchant for an unpaid debt. The merchant cleverly wins in court, and Venice gets a good laugh about tricking the tricky Jew. This leaves us to wonder whether ol’ Will was a bigot like the rest of ’em or if he was shining a light on the ugliness of his society’s anti-Semitism. Radford has chosen the latter; his film, set in 16th century Venice, explores specifically the terrible treatment of Shylock as a reason for his sneakiness– he had to survive. This brings a much more complex, human element to a character perceived as a caricature, and we can’t think of anyone more suited to playing complicated, tragic men than Pacino. Usually we adhere to the adage that “the movie is never as good as the book” but in this case we’re pretty sure The Merchant of Venice will be better than listening to sophomore high school students read it aloud.