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It was rumored not long ago that Manson-spared, thrice-Oscar-nominated director Roman Polanski was ready to return from self-imposed exile in France to face a 1970s statutory rape conviction, now that the judge who swore to put him behind bars is long-dead. He wound up sending his movie, the next-to-last salvo in the previous film fad, big Devil movies (whose final entry, Winona Ryder's Lost Souls, has been pushed back again until September so as to not get lost in the crowd), to be judged instead. Verdict: while it may not be the most carefully crafted boo, Polanski shows he still has a way with the camera.
Following a suicidal prologue featuring a half-dozen angles and techniques most directors never think of, the story picks up the trail of unscrupulous bibliophile Dean Corso (Johnny Depp), whose voice and cigarette-holding manner evoke a wispy-goateed Rod Serling. He's hired by fabulously rich, physically imposing publisher Boris Balkan (what a name; you half expect him to turn up in the Rocky & Bullwinkle movie), played by Frank Langella, to do some sleuthing into three copies of a book reputed to have been written by Satan himself in 1666. You and I would probably be a little reluctant to take on such an assignment from someone who once played Dracula and who uses the PIN code 666 to open all his doors, but Corso is initially too greedy to care: "You believe in the supernatural, I believe in my percentage."
The quest takes him from New York to Portugal, Spain, and France, pursued along the way by gorgeous, insatiable Satanist Leana Tefler (Lena Olin). He discovers that the woodcuts in each copy of the book, though authentic, have slight discrepancies; while playing a Dr. Evil version of "Find Six Things That Are Different" he spots the letters "LCF" in telltale places. Get it? "Lucifer?" Corso's uncanny deductive powers put him in mortal danger, but he gets a little breathing room courtesy of convenient appearances by a flying, motorcycle-riding, kung-fu French babe who may be either a demon or his guardian angel. By the time Corso solves the final puzzle he's too curious to care anymore about his money.
For all this silliness, The Ninth Gate spins an atmospheric yarn that, though weak and unsubtle in the details, still held my interest. Polanski wields a sinister visual classicism evincing his influence by the gothic chillers from Hammer Films, with a nod toward Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane (this could have been called The Maltese Beelzebub). But there's also a playfulness at work, similar to Polanski's great 1967 farce Dance of the Vampires; he seems to be winking at the audience while all Hell is breaking loose. Patient fans of old-fashioned horror films, especially those who don't mind a potentially ambiguous ending, will be rewarded with a visual richness sorely lacking in such recent fare as End of Days.
Me, I'm just a sucker for an attractive woman on a fast German motorcycle. C+
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