The Ninth Gate
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Movie Reviews of The Ninth Gate
Movie Review: Not the best Polanski but still enjoyable
Summary: 4 Stars
Fans of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant" may be a little disappointed with this film. Although the plot is a little shallow, you can still appreciate Polanski's style during most of the scenes.Movie Review: The movie is excellent, but.......
Summary: 4 Stars
The movie is excellent, Roman Polansky ........ and Jhonny Deep...... what do you want ? But no subtitles are included in the DVD (The page in amazon show subtitles in Spanish but it's no true).Movie Review: Johnny Depp is great!
Summary: 4 Stars
I love Johnny Depp! This is quite a thriller but Depp is believeable in any role. I thoroughly enjoyed it.Movie Review: The Gate to Mediocre Filmmaking
Summary: 3 Stars
Roman Polanski is an uneven filmmaker. Somtimes he produces a great, original story that captures the imagination, as in The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945(2002) and Chinatown (Special Collector's Edition) (1974). Other times, he manages to create creepy psychological drama, as in Rosemary's Baby(1968) and The Tenant(1976). In fact, Chinatown continues to be one of my favorite newer film noirs, and Rosemary's Baby is the ultimate example of how to combine horror and humor in what is ultimately a scary movie.
But sometimes Polanski's films are just okay, as in Frantic (1988) and downright bad, as in Pirates [Import] (1986). The Ninth Gate (1999) is one of those okay movies.
It's based on the book by Arturo Perez-Reverte called The Club Dumas, which was recommended to me by my friend J. Mark Bertrand. I loved it. The book was about a conniving book dealer who is researching two books at once--a lost version of a chapter by Dumas and another book called The Ninth Gate. What made Perez-Reverte's version great is the way that the main character, Corso, gets mixed up in both of them. By the end, it's almost as if he can't distinguish fantasy and reality, and so he ends up falling into several strange situations dealing with satanism and Dumas lovers. And they look a lot alike, too.
But Polanski removes all of the Dumas stuff and makes the movie solely about Corso and The Ninth Gate, a book supposedly ghostwritten by Lucifer. What he creates here is a creepy movie with a great character. Johnny Depp plays Corso as laid-back yet unscrupulous, and his acting fits the character superbly. For the first hour, the tension is taut and building. And then you learn what is actually happening, or at least what may be happening. And it goes downhill from there.
Sure the ending is left open, but it's not necessarily a good thing. Sure there is psychological drama. But by the end, I don't care anymore. The plot has become so ridiculous that I don't care about the characters or whether they manage to actually conjure the devil. And the movie incidentally features one of the stupidest sex scenes on film.
So all in all, it's an okay movie.
Movie Review: Only Johnny Gets To Climax
Summary: 3 Stars
So the Devil, having eternity to pass the time and no XBOX 360, got bored one night in 1666, thought it was fun to play a game by conjuring up a puzzle. Whoever solves this puzzle is granted the powers of a god. You know, immortality, invincibility, ability to fly, walk on water, all that god stuff. The keys to this puzzle are hidden in 3 books, in the form of 9 illustrated pages signed with Lucifer's initials, that when properly deciphered, unlocks the "ninth gate" to the ultimate "power-up".
Nobody is able to solve the puzzle until now, when book dealer/detective Johnny Depp is hired by a wealthy collector, who owns 1 of the 3 books, to compare his copy with the other 2 that belong to separate owners, located in Portugal and France.
Okay, nice concept. I was hooked. I was entertained. I was liking almost everything in this movie; the visuals, the creepy sometimes circusy soundtrack, the mystery woman, the performances by Depp & Langella. Everything except when I got to the ending, which left me going "Huh? What the hell? That's it? That's the end?". It feels incomplete, unsatisfying, anti-climactic.
And here's why. Here comes the spoiler.
For the main character he gets his reward -- he gets laid with a hot chick and this she-devil grants him the final key to ultimate power. For the viewer, all the reward you get is to see Johnny Depp's back as he walks to the entrance of an old castle, gets engulfed by light and fades out. Man, that is SO LAME! I expected something more dramatic than that. Remember that scene in the coolest movie of all time, Matrix Reloaded, when Neo finally reaches the doorway to the Source and engulfed by light? Imagine that the movie ended right there, without proceeding to the Architect scene & the saving of Trinity. That's how it feels. Well, okay the Architect scene was pretentious B.S. anyway, but that's another story. The point is, it leaves you feeling hanging, feeling that there's something missing.
Hell, I'd even settle for a Michael Jackson Thriller type of ending with a shot of Johnny Depp grinning, demonic eyes glowing, with or without the maniacal Vincent Price laughing in the background. Just give me a more tangible, tactile way to express that he acquired some of the Devil's powers and I'm happy. Other than that, I wouldn't mind watching this again.