The Ninth Gate **** (1999, Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner, Barbara Jefford) – Classic Movie Review 1,628

Co-writer/director Roman Polanski’s shamefully neglected and underrated 1999 horror thriller film The Ninth Gate stars Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, a New York rare book dealer who is hired by the creepy collector of books about the devil, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), to track down and compare all the remaining copies of a legendary 17th-century Satanic text reputed to confer limitless power on its possessor.

So, seeking out the last two copies of the demon text, Depp flies to Sintra in Portugal, and Paris to contact the owners Victor Fargas (Jack Taylor) and Baroness Kessler (Barbara Jefford) and find the genuine exemplar of The Nine Gates whose engravings form a riddle to conjure up the devil.

It may not quite be Polanski’s absolute best – of course it certainly can’t compete with Rosemary’s Baby – but it’s still a very highly agreeable mystery chiller, in which an unusually cast Depp greatly excels.

A glossy, handsome-looking production, with slightly arty pretensions, the film goes on just a tad too long, and gets a little wayward as it tries for the big special-effects-led finish, but it still grips and entertains extremely nicely throughout.

Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner, Barbara Jefford, James Russo, Jack Taylor, José Lôpez Rodero, Willy Holt and Allen Garfield also enjoy nice roles, especially Jefford.

Darius Khondji’s cinematography and Dean Tavoularis’s set designs make for a lovely looking movie, and Wojciech Kilar’s score is another polished piece of work.

Polanski, John Brownjohn and Enrique Urbizu base their polished screenplay on the novel, The Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,628

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