AllMovie

If director Marc Levin wants to promote tolerance between peoples of different belief systems, he has no better example of that kind of magnanimous behavior than himself. In Protocols of Zion, the intrepid Jewish documentarian is a paragon of calmness in the face of intense ethnic hatred, coming into contact with some of the most loathsome Anti-Semites he can possibly dig up. Instead of butting heads with them, as his every instinct probably tells him to do, he listens and even nods along with their inflammatory comments. Whether this is to give them a fair platform, or just to avoid being killed, is unclear -- probably a little of both. These combustible interviews are just one of the things that makes Protocols of Zion a fascinating study on the modern perceptions and misconceptions of Jews and the Jewish faith, in the United States and elsewhere. However, the film feels like a collection of disparate informational chunks, rather than the implied promise of an organized investigation of the 100-year-old hoax referenced in the title -- a document that purportedly contains proof of a Jewish plot for world domination. Levin does use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text that originated in Russia in the early 20th century, as a backbone for his movie, listing a variety of the bogus dictates, then loosely tying them to modern stereotypes about Judaism held by Anti-Semites. But the movie meanders between interviews with White Power groups, Holocaust deniers, Arab newspaper publishers and Palestinian-American gangbangers, mixing in words of perspective from Jewish scholars, without finding a clear message, other than that Jews are on the receiving end of a lot of hatred from people who can't articulate their reasoning. The examples Levin provides are incredibly sobering, even if they aren't incredibly focused.