Yes, Michael Radford's "The Merchant of Venice" is a movie. Though an intelligent, supple adaptation of Shakespeare's play, it betrays no particular whiff of the stage or page. It tells its story with visual images even more than language, while retaining enough language to investigate the serious issues of loyalty, love, mercy and desire in this very troubling dark comedy.

		'The Merchant of Venice' Rated: R for some nudity. Starring: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins. Director: Michael Radford

Indeed, "Merchant" is generally now classed as a "problem play," not a comedy at all, because its final chapter, after Shylock, the much-abused and vengeful Jew, has been crushed by a self-righteous, vengeful Christian establishment, hardly strikes us as cheery.

Visually, Radford conjures up an exotic world and fills it with vivid characters. And he starts the audience off with a brief explanation of the Jews' lowly status in "liberal" Venice, backed up with pictures of the Jewish ghetto, from which, heartbreakingly, the forcefully converted Shylock is excluded at the end.

Being a movie, this "Merchant" also features a movie star, the craggy Al Pacino, an experienced Shakespearean whose Shylock is a passionate, understated force.

We meet him at a street market, carefully weighing out what looks like a pound of fresh meat. It makes a vibrant visual presence, soon plopped bloodily down on Shylock's counting house table to remind us of the threat behind the business being discussed.

Radford opens up the screenplay, letting us see Antonio spit on Shylock, follow Portia to visit the learned Bellario, and so on. Radford's Venice is robustly visual, its mobs and bordellos as detailed (though in a more somber palette) as in Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films.

Rearranging the text allows Radford to cut back and forth between the Venice of gossip and business and the serene Belmont, where Portia rules like a fairy tale princess, albeit no sleeping beauty but a lively red-haired girl with brains and desires.

Radford dresses his scenes and characters with reference to some great designers. Portia appears looking like a sea-borne Venus by Botticelli; her dead father's portrait surveys the scene of her trials like a massive Titian; and the Prince of Arragon arrives with a train of attendant women as if straight out of a court portrait by Velasquez.

Is Shylock a villain or victim? Here, he's more the latter, but he's not blameless. This Venice is a real world where prejudice is general and motives are mixed. After preaching New Testament forgiveness in opposition to Shylock's Old Testament cry for bloody justice, the Christian court is happy to opt for Old Testament vengeance itself.

Even Antonio (the title character) has it wrong, castigating Shylock as evil but never acknowledging his own guilts or thwarted desires. Jeremy Irons' Antonio is as good as delicately nuanced film acting can get: His silences and reserve speak volumes. Pacino is the force of implacable nature you expect and Joseph Fiennes is a properly sympathetic, lightweight Bassanio. But the real find is Lynn Collins' earnest, smart, witty, sexy Portia.

There aren't a lot of laughs, except for the self-obsessed suitor princes. Gobbo and his father are wistful observers rather than clowns, and Gratiano's comic antics are moderated. Lorenzo is softened into a true lover, not one who pursues Jessica for her father's jewels.

The movie ends with a melancholy sense that the world is unfair and first love cannot last. Its final image, draped with evening light, is of fishermen on the lagoons of Venice, very enigmatic and cool. The glimmering water is the climax of such images throughout the film, suggesting instability, wishfulness and shifting fortunes.