Well, I also read some critics in Italian language about the film Il
Mercanted del Pietre and they were all criticizing it, mainly the
director Renzo Martinelli. In my opinion those bad critics only came
because the director argued the theme of the film, that it is totally
political. Even so I was curious to check it. The history seems
interesting and it's cool imagine Harvey in this character.

I hope the film comes sooner here in the Brazil!

Wesley.

--- In harveykeitelfans@yahoogroups.com, antigona35new <no_reply@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi friends. The critics are really terrible with "Il Mercante di
> pietre" aka "The Stone Merchant". I´ve found a lot of websites with
> reviews in Italian language, and any positive article. Phrases
> like "brutal atack to the Islamic world", "unidimensional point of
> view" or "caricaturesque characters" are frequent. I´ve read only
an
> article in english, an opinion about the journalist Oriana Fallacci
> (who die a week ago) that critics too the Martinelli´s film. Here´s
> an extract:
>
> ......"The film director Renzo Martinelli has now jumped on the
> bandwagon of the scare peddlers. Introducing his new film, Il
> Mercante di Pietre (The Stone Merchant), to the press in Rome
> (Repubblica, September 14) he went right to the point: "The
> terrorists are among us. I go everywhere armed." Then, detouring
> back to the year 1453, he said Constantinople had been lost because
> somebody left a gate open. "Just so has Europe left a door open
> through which Muslims now infiltrate." To this call to battle,
> Harvey Keitel, Martinelli's imported star, added a few confused and
> irrelevant words: He'd been a "hard and determined" Marine but
> turned against the war in Vietnam.
>
> The only surprise in this action flick weighed down with propaganda
> will be to see Italy presented as a place where nothing happens but
> terrorism. In reality, unlike New York, Madrid, and London, Italian
> cities have known no serious incidents. Moreover, though Italy
> boasts fewer Muslim immigrants than other major European countries,
> in Martinelli's film they seem to outnumber the native population
> and are each and every one a terrorist.
>
> The film starts with views of Rome: First of a mosque complete with
> wailing in Arabic and then of St. Peter's Basilica with the same
> music. Get that? Good. Then you are clever enough to take in this
> story of comic-strip characters, scary cuts, cheap melodrama, and
> big brutal camera sweeps. Just to keep folks awake, it starts with
> an Islamist terror attack in an airport lounge. The beautiful woman
> (Jane March) who was grabbed as hostage by a terrorist before he
got
> shot in the head is the wife of an Italian amputee. He lost much of
> his body in the terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi
> in 1998.
>
> Mr. Nice Guy, cut off at the thighs, has become an expert in Jihad
> studies, which he teaches at the University of Rome. But he takes
> time off to escort his beautiful wife to picturesque Cappadocia in
> Turkey. There, instead of merely recuperating from being taken
> hostage, she falls for a mysterious gem salesman, Harvey Keitel
done
> up as an "homme fatal." The affair continues in Rome, offering
noisy
> orgasms to alternate with threatening Arab song.
>
> Our cuckold has taken in the situation and suspects Keitel not so
> much of sexual freebooting as of Islamist leanings. But no one will
> believe the Jihad expert, not the newspaper editor, nor the Italian
> Secret Service, and least of all his students and his wife. Do you
> see the point? No one believed Oriana Fallaci either when she
> insisted on closing the door so as not to lose Constantinople,
> whoops, the Western World. As for the wife, she definitely has a
> real case of the hots for Harvey and pursues him to Turin. There,
> after listening to a bogeyman imam preach (F. Murray Abraham has
> found his destiny), we learn that -- guess what -- a terrorist plot
> is brewing, this one between Calais and Dover where, surely a
> curiosity in those parts, more menacing Arab music can be heard.
>
> Meanwhile, back at the abandoned husband's pad in Rome, he ponders
> videos: one of Muslims cutting off each other's limbs, another of
> that 1998 attack in Nairobi and, of course, some shots of the Twin
> Towers falling. He's interrupted by two Somali killers come to
call.
> Evil for Martinelli is mainly Somali, maybe because their immigrant
> pool in Rome is large enough to furnish a variety of actors. But
> those Secret Service people weren't so stupid as they seemed and
> turn up just in time to shoot the culprits dead. Martinelli takes
no
> prisoners.
>
> The beautiful, sinning wife will have no such luck. She's been
> tricked into proceeding to Dover on her own with a radio active
> bomb, which duly sinks the ferry in the British port. Of the three
> plotters, Harvey goes soft in the end and regrets his deed. As a
> name actor still able to -- just barely -- convince in bed, the ex-
> hard Marine didn't want to go back to the States earmarked for only
> total-baddy roles or unemployment. There are no similar worries for
> the two (more) Somalis who shoot him. Their careers will consist of
> being real bad guys."
>