No reasonable person can doubt that the sharia practice of stoning a woman to death for supposed "adultery" is utterly grotesque – as is the cringing reluctance of some on the western left to condemn it, for fear of being branded Islamophobic. But this issue deserved something more substantial than this well-intentioned, but laboured and woodenly acted film, based on a true story. James Caviezel plays Freidoune Sahebjam, the Franco-Iranian journalist who in 1986 uncovered a case of stoning in Iran. Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Zahra, the accused's aunt, who defiantly challenges the verdict against Soraya (Mozhan Marnò), convicted on a charge trumped up by a scheming, adulterous husband and sinister cleric. The group psychosis is chilling, but the film itself is uncertainly handled, and the syrupy-sorrowing music is misjudged. Caviezel's presence is an uneasy (and surely deliberate) reminder of Mel Gibson's Passion and the casting of the first stone.
The appalling true story of an Iranian woman stoned for adultery is let down by wooden acting and syrupy music
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