This is a forty minute TV plot (plus commercial breaks to fill the hour slot) spread out so thinly it's wearisome. No need for spoilers in any comment, anyone of us could have written this tripe in our sleep. The clichés, the stilted dialogue (sounds better in the dubbed Italian version perhaps but then Italian dubbing actors are good - one even made Larry Hagman sound convincing long ago!)and the Colosseum as a backdrop when we know where the action is taking place! Corny. Keitel of course rises above it and F. Murray Abrahams has his usual "stage presence" but the lines don't stand up. Mollà is sometimes out of sync. and I think he may have muffed the reading on set and had to dub it back in.
Review of The Stone Merchant
