Review: The Ninth Gate (1999)

Jose Cruz
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:17:32 +0000
Theatrical release, Satanic, France, Spain, USA

Having conjured up a vision from Hell in a New York brownstone apartment house some thirty years previously, director Roman Polanski returned to the diabolical fold with this, a loose adaptation of the novel El Club Dumas by Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte. And although the quiet, precise trappings of the filmmaker's work remain intact in this old curiosity, it is ultimately a film less interested in heralding the coming of the Devil than one that sees fit to tell us that he's been here the entire time.

Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a reptilian book dealer who cheats unwitting people out of antiquated volumes worth thousands with as much ease as lighting up one of his ever-handy cigarettes. There is no passion or sense of duty in his task, only reward and gain. That's what makes him an ideal candidate for the imposing collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), a grave eccentric who owns a library of ancient texts based solely around Satan.