The Stoning of Soraya M – review

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.