The Ninth Gate

December 11, 2004

Rated: R Runtime: 132 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

DVD QuickTake

I’ve got to agree with Alex in that this movie has one of the most annoying endings ever filmed. I really don’t understand what Roman Polanski was thinking here, and unfortunately he doesn’t use the commentary track on the disk to help explain what happens.

Another thing I noticed that I found quite distracting was the music. This movie is supposed to be kinda dark, kinda suspenseful, etc. Now, imagine that the music used during some of the tense scenes is very much like the music in Ghostbusters. Doesn’t exactly fit the mood does it?

The Ninth Gate

Original Theatrical Review

Now that I’ve seen Roman Polanski’s “The Ninth Gate,” it is obvious to me that the reason why he won’t set foot on US soil any more is so that I won’t kick his blankity-blank ass right off this planet.

Polanski’s latest film has reinforced the current trend in Hollywood of “Let’s make a really great, interesting movie that has a truly awful ending.” This trend is going to cause me to go postal before too much longer, I’m afraid.

The Ninth Gate starts off promisingly enough, with Johnny Depp playing Dean Corso, a capable, if not totally ethical, book detective. Frank Langella plays a wealthy (and creepy) collector of satanic books who hires Corso to research the authenticity of a very rare book that he’s just recently acquired.

What follows is a very nicely done “onion peeling.” As each layer is pulled back, we see more glimpses of what might really be going on. The movie is absolutely loaded with mysterious & fascinating characters and, though Corso soon realizes he is in over his head and he needs to quit, his greed - or is it something else? - won’t let him.

About 2/3rds of the way through the movie, however, I began to wonder to myself, “Where is all this going to lead?” I was trying to puzzle out the possible outcomes and meanings behind the events up to that point and, by the time the movie was over, I realized that it really lead nowhere.

The Ninth Gate didn’t “just stop” as the classic stinker Maximum Overdrive does, but it comes pretty close. I can think of a few really good movies that left major questions unanswered but, at least in those cases, they were multiple choice questions where you at least knew what the possibilities were. Here, however, the questions are totally “fill-in-the-blank” and I’m not even sure what the questions are!

If not for this completely ambiguous ending, this movie would easily have been worth a “4″ on the MfG rating scale. However, not even Lena Olin’s delicious backside can prevent the nasty aftertaste of this flick. Score it a weak “2″.

Posted by John | Filed Under 2 Stars, DVD, Drama, Emmanuelle Seigner, Frank Langella, Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, R