...Polanski light, glimmers of the old genius playing his cards gleefully, then losing his cool at the end.
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It's nice to see director Roman Polanski back in the supernatural, detective-movie business, even if the result isn't up to the standards of "Rosemary's Baby" or "Chinatown." Still, he's in familiar territory with "The Ninth Gate," a sly, tongue-in-cheek, horror-noir thriller.
The movie begins with the credits displayed through a series of creepy doors opening one after another, something like walking through the dungeons of a first-person computer game and never quite knowing what to expect around the next corner. Along with some eerie background music, the film establishes its mood early on. Then we get a grim opening scene involving an old man hanging himself in a small, dark, mahogany-paneled library. Polanski is nothing if not good with atmosphere, and that's what this film is mainly about.
Johnny Depp is getting plenty of experience with supernatural investigations, having just made "Sleepy Hollow" before doing "The Ninth Gate." He stars this time as Dean Corso, a shady rare-books dealer who is hired to find some ancient Satanic texts. Corso is the kind of unscrupulous fellow who will do anything for a buck, and Depp plays him as the antihero he is, the bad guy we come to like. Unfortunately, Corso is also quite reclusive, trusting nobody and talking to almost no one, so we never really get to know him very well or get into his mind to fathom his motivations. This becomes a problem later in the story.
Anyway, he's retained by a wealthy bibliophile, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), to find two remaining volumes of "The Nine Gates of the Shadow Kingdom," a book reputed to have been written by Lucifer himself and to have the power to conjure up the Prince of Darkness in a person's living room. Balkan owns one of three known editions and wants to authenticate it as the only genuine copy by having Corso find the other two and compare them to his. The investigation requires Corso go to Portugal and France to find the other books, and Balkan tells him there may be danger along the way. But Corso is paid handsomely in advance, an offer he can't refuse. "There's nothing more reliable than a man whose loyalty can be bought for hard cash," says the sinister Balkan.
In spite of his many sleazy business arrangements, Corso lives in a shoddy little New York City apartment and lives off of TV dinners. We can at least see why he accepts Balkan's deal, even if we can't understand what he does with his money. Puts it all into his precious book collection, one assumes.
In short order everyone around Corso winds up dead or worse, starting with a fellow book dealer named Bernie (James Russo), seemingly his only friend. Then there's Mrs. Telfer (Lena Olin), the previous owner of Balkan's edition, who tries to seduce Corso with money and sex to get it back; a pair of old book restorers; a crippled baroness; and an impoverished nobleman living in a decaying chateau. And forever Corso is followed by a mysterious young woman (Emmanuelle Siegner) in mismatched socks! Danger lurks everywhere in Corso's hunt for the true book, which he comes to suspect may, after all, really be able to raise the Devil. After a while, as the body count climbs, Corso begins to feel that maybe he's just a pawn in some bigger, diabolical game.
I hope Polanski doesn't mean for us to take any of this seriously. If we did, it would become awfully silly awfully fast. Instead, the director seems to be poking fun at his own past films, the dark, malignant passageways in Rosemary's apartment house and the constant perils from ominous strangers in Jake's L.A. labyrinth. However, at the same time Polanksi is trying to make us smile in subtle amusement, he is also trying to make us feel uneasy, even fearful of the suspenseful goings on. Most of the time the combination works, but then he reaches the final half hour and runs out of patience.
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[release]4770[/release]