Overall Rating
 Awesome: 14.5%
Worth A Look: 22.14%
Average: 32.06%
Pretty Bad: 16.03%
Total Crap: 15.27%
10 reviews, 71 user ratings
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| Ninth Gate, The |
by desdemona
"Rosemary's Baby disguised with a slightly different plot and new actors."
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Well, Roman Polanski isn't one to stray too far from what he knows, and apparently he knows Satanism (and quite well). This movie seemed like nothing more than a regurgitation of Rosemary's Baby, which was in itself painfully predictable. I kept expecting Mia Farrow to walk out onto the screen the whole time.Not that the plots were incredibly alike. But somehow Polanski found a way to make two entirely different stories, neither of which even written by him (Rosemary's Baby was based on a novel of the same name by Ira Levin, The Ninth Gate was based on the Arturo Perez-Reverte novel The Club Dumas), shockingly similar. I realize that many directors have a certain style they like to stick to and that tends to make their movies similar, but really--this was too much.
The Ninth Gate is the story of Dean Corso (Johnny Depp), a man deeply immersed in the field of rare books, who is sent on a mission to find two extremely rare books (called The Nine Gates) rumored to have been written by a man in the 1500s that based them on a book supposedly written by Satan himself. The rumor is that if one can decode the prints in the book, then he can open the ninth gate of hell, bringing Satan to Earth. These books are the rare collector's wet dream; only three in existence, two of which rumored to be copies. The man Corso is working for--Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), who has the largest collection of rare books about Satan in the world--has one of the books and sends Corso to find the other two, trying to discover which one is the authentic one. One thing leads to another and SURPRISE! Corso gets entangled in a web a murder and (surprise again) Satanic worship--and who would have thought that would happen (you know, given that the books were about Satan, written in part by him, and about how to bring Satan onto earth; seemed like a real shocker to me). Then the Satanists begin offing people and make desperate attempts to get this book from Corso and the movie just keeps going and going and going...
The story is definately an intriguing one. Unfortunately it was as predictable as Titanic (who knew the ship would sink?). Polanski has a way of making clues jump out at you, nailing you across the head like a baseball bat, screaming "LOOK, I'M A CLUE!!!!!" the entire time. Rosemary's Baby was like that, and so is The Ninth Gate. Another similarity: in about twenty minutes you have the whole movie figured out, yet it just keeps going and going and going...until finally you just wish the Satanists would hurry up and win so you can be done with the damned thing. Really the only difference I could see between Rosemary's Baby and this movie was that one was about Satan's child and the other is about Satan's books. Despite that, the movies completely mirrored each other in content and construction. Even down to the corny black robes and pentagram necklaces the Satanists wore (which is really annoying because it assumes that all Satanists are these laughably superstitious, psychotic people that walk around mumbling about Satan all day long--not that Satanists are necessarily nice people, either, but still, the stereotype has been played to the point of being ridiculous). Then, of course, there were the series of murders the Satanists commit in both movies so they can get what they want, and there was also the Polanski-trademark ambiguous ending that resolves nothing and seems to be Satan-sympathetic. Then there was the innocent protagonists of both movies that get drawn into Satanism and end up in a questionable position in the end (trying not to reveal the ending here, but you'll be able to guess it, anyway).
There were good things about Polanski's consistency: the good thing is that he doesn't need to be constantly shouting "BOO!" at the audience to keep it scary...however, it's only scary if you're not sleeping. Then there were the less-than-inspired performances of the cast. Johnny Depp just didn't seem to know what was going on at the time, Lena Olin (one of the psychotic Satanists) was annoyingly shrieky but that was about it, and Emmanuelle Seigner (who played this weird girl that kept showing up mysteriously during key moments of the movie--and you'll figure out who she is after about half an hour) was definately creepy but lacked that creepy enthusiam I so desperately wanted to see. Frank Langella probably offered the most convincing performance of the lot; the Brittish accent just made the role for that high-society Satanic type. He was a sophisticated kind of pyscho, after all.Ambiguous is the word I'd use to describe the cast, and ambiguous is the word I'd use to describe the movie. Sometimes ambiguous can be good, like in Rosemary's Baby. However, Rosemary's Baby has already been done; now this ambiguity is just tiresome.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1730&reviewer=86
originally posted: 03/12/00 15:58:49
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USA
10-Mar-2000 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
28-Sep-2000 (M)
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