@wintermonk, I somewhat agree with you. i read the book long ago as well, and had so much confusions. this is not a criticism about the movie, rather the perspective of the story itself.
In the story, I think the so called villain here, Shylock, was actually not the actual villain, rather an oppressed Hero. He was the one who was seeing his fellow religious believers being oppressed, prisoned, and being thrown into the rivers, wearing always a mandatory red hat of racism; he was just following his own religion peacefully and minding his own business. he was regularly being spitted on by the dominating part of the society for being a minority member, and being called many mean names in occasions.
He was the one who lent huge amount of money, not for earning interest, rather in good faith to his 'hating spitter', to meet a man's non-surviving wants (wants of alluring a wealthy woman into marriage), and then faced complete default and forfeiture at the time of repayment; and moreover he was robbed of his precious wealth by the same borrowing group; the daughter he had and raised was taken away by them (during 1596 conservative traditions, whilst lady Portia was obligated to follow her family's 'husband finding tradition' and yet she did follow).
And after all the unjust and undepicted pains and sufferings he had gone through for so long, then he was asking for justice in a court full of that same dominating society members shouting at him with anger and despise; faced the so called legal trial by the judgement of a bias imposter in disguise of a civil doctor. After that he was forced with trickery to give up all his remaining wealth, esteem, daughter, home, and most of all his lifelong religious belief, left all alone in the street to rot in older age with humiliation and disgrace. And the dominating unjust party carried on living wealthy and happily ever after. And all along I felt a deep sigh about this entire concluding injustice.
Though for an instance Shylock acted as a merciless villain for insisting on cutting that pound of flesh; but we must not forget or disrespect all his suffered misery in the context for being raging such insanity. I also perceive Antonio to be of a moderately good manner in the court.
Finally,to derive and infer from the story, with due respect, I believe most readers and viewers need to reconsider their perceptions, and give it a good thought about what was right and what was wrong. This same story still lives in reality in our modern society in evolving fashion, thus perceptions should be at least close to just.
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