The Stoning of Soraya M.

For those ambivalent about whether stoning women to death is a cruel punishment, here’s The Stoning of Soraya M., a dutifully plodding if watchable dramatization of a real, particularly appalling application of Sharia (Islamic law) in small-town Iran. Soraya (Mozhan Marnò) refuses to divorce her abusive husband, Ali (Navid Negahban), because he won’t leave her enough money to feed her children, so he teams up with the village’s mullah to start a rumor that she’s committing adultery, which is punishable by death. Events take their inevitable course, and Soraya gets to live out the title in a bloody and prolonged sequence reminiscent of The Passion of the Christ —appropriately, James Caviezel pops up here, speaking credible Farsi as the journalist who blows the whole thing up. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh gives the proceedings more flair than is usual for the explicitly didactic, but this is basically self-congratulatory fare for people who feel more “politically conscious” when reminded that women in the Islamic world can have it rough. Right now, you’re better off just watching the news.