Back when Rossi was owned by Interarms,
Interarms had an import contract with Rossi, never owned the company. Taurus bought out Rossi and IMHO Rossi is a better product for it. I've owned Rossis from 1981 through the 80s and 90s. The late 80s, early 90s Rossis were pretty pathetic for fit and finish and had firing pin breakage issues.
I had a 971 4" .357 from the early 90s I rather liked. I fixed the firing pin by fitting a K frame firing pin to it. It snapped, sent it back to Interarms, and it snapped on the second round.
Good gunsmith fitted the K frame pin and THEN the gun was good. Didn't cost that much to fix it, either.
What I liked about the 971 was it was rather light for a four inch full lug .357 and something just over 30 ounces unloaded. Made for a great hiking gun and hunting back up. .38s were accurate in it and took many a rabbit for camp meat for me.
I believe the 720 is on the same frame as the 971 so should be similar in weight per given barrel length. I never owned one, not really in to .44 Special, but they should be good, serviceable guns. Not high on my list, though, but then, no .44 Special is. I have given thought to the Taurus 405, though, a .40 Smith and Wesson using moon clips, but never picked one up. I'm into .45 colt in my single actions. Taurus made a .45 Colt snubby that seemed like it might be the way to go for the big bore guy.
I had and sold a 1917 Smith and Wesson. The gun was pretty worn, so building a carry out of it was not really in the cards. The N frame would be a huge snubby, i'd think, BUT I've seen some really nifty 1917 snubs built, one particular was a Fitz special I read about sometime back. Seemed like an interesting project, that.