In The Ninth Gate, Roman Polanski's first film in six years, the birth father of Rosemary's Baby brings his darkly satirical touch back to horror.
It works -- for a while -- especially with the nattily bearded Johnny Depp typically underplaying his role. With a mischievous if suppressed glee, Depp helps to create a creepy tautness that sucks audiences in and makes us eager to see where this foolishness might lead.
Depp portrays a sleazy rare book dealer based in New York. There is no lie he won't tell, no scam he won't engineer, no woman he won't bed, to lay his lands on a valuable text and make a buck. In short, a thoroughly modern American.
Depp is hired by a mysterious and equally immoral business tycoon (Frank Langella) to track down an ancient volume that was supposedly co-authored by Satan. Off to Europe he goes, encountering bizarre experiences from Toledo in Spain, to Sintra in Portugal, to Paris, and finally to Satan's French country chateau.
Our anti-hero begins to get obsessed with the idea of Satan himself. Especially when his research starts to turn up some startling facts and leaves behind a trail of corpses. Meanwhile, a mysterious sex siren (Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski's actress wife) keeps tracking Depp for no known reason, except perhaps for the chance to strip naked for a sex scene.
The script, a collaboration among Polanski, Enrique Urbiz and John Brownjohn, is based on popular Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte's book El Club Dumas.
The plot summons up a demon cult (one that mocks the mass orgiastic gathering in Eyes Wide Shut) as well as mad-as-hatter book collectors, psycho Spanish twins, various vixens and a lot of threatening men with bad attitudes.
The movie makes a pretty thin gruel out of these ingredients. The only saving graces as the thing plods on -- the movie is way too long for what it becomes -- are Depp's appeal and Polanski's malicious humour. The funny stuff isn't about making jokes. It's about making fun of horror conventions.
For example, at a Devil worshippers' meeting, where everyone is cloaked in black and trying to summon up Satan, Langella strides in, calls them all fools and shouts, "Boo!" They run for cover. That's amusing. Too bad Stanley Kubrick couldn't see the scene. It's making fun of him, too.
But the movie still implodes into a silly mess at the end. It's not really about anything, because Polanski obviously doesn't take this material seriously on any level, even as a story.
We're left with a special-effects extravaganza that fizzles out in a big but empty anti-climax. Ho hum, Polanski's back.
(This film is rated AA)
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