Customer Reviews
Boffo! a good one - By: Garry Williams, 10 Feb 2008 
This film is a study of the struggle of knowledge Vs power. The Johhny Depp character searches for knowledge not power & is thus rewarded over the other protaginists.Is Hell/the Devil as evil as man has himself become in his quest for power? The expression 'Hell on Earth' was obviously a factor in the writing of this movie. Polanski, as always, makes you think & question the motives of everyone involved. Those expecting to watch a Roman Polanski movie for just action should hire another directors movie. Powerful performances from Depp & Langella make this a film to watch.
Smart and original adaptation of a great book - By: Maciej K., 13 Sep 2007 
I like Hollywood blockbusters & they are my usual poison but from time to time I simply MUST take a break & watch something that is NOT Hollywoodian, is not a sequel & doesn't involve too many car chases, superheroes, explosions, laser beams & idiotic dialogues. If you are looking for such a thing, you will not find much better that "The Ninth Gate".
To begin, one precision - this is the adaptation of a great novel, "Club Dumas" by the Spanish author Arturo Perez Reverte. The book is amazing but very, very hard to adapt to the screen - so Polanski had to make many changes. As the result, you can now watch a great movie & read a great book, in whatever order you like, without being disappointed by one of them.
This movie is about ancient books, people who collect them & people who live by trading them - & it is an amazing thing how passionate this world is. It is a great achievement of Polanski that he managed to keep a very honest pace of events, when placing the action mostly in librairies, bookshops etc. The galllery of persons shown in this movie is, typicallly for Polanski, made of characters mostly excentrical, frequently upsetting, sometimes very funny, but never, not even once, boring.
This is in large part one Johnny Depp show, & this is a great show. His character (Dean Corso, trader in ancient books) is in this movie slightly less antipatic than in the novel, but clearly he is not a totallly nice guy. The way Johnny Depp acts in this movie confirms the impression I had for many years now - he is not only handsome, he is simply one of the greatest actors alive (and doesn't even need dreadlocks & gold teeth to prove it).
Emmanuelle Seigner plays a character that is totallly ambigous (she is just The Girl - we never know what is her name) & I will not reveal anything more about her. She is beautiful, mysterious, tempting but distant & she certainly is leading the main hero somewhere. But we do not know where - until the last image.
Lena Olin (Liana Telfer) & Frank Langella (Boris Balkan) are other stars of the show - they are supporting characters & appear less on the screen, but they are both very important.
However the real "hero" of this movie could only be... a book. This book is callled - what else - "The Nine Gates" & was written by a heretic alchimist around year 1515. The Inquisition then burned the author with alll the copies which was possible to find - & the further we advance in the movie, the most we realise, that for once, for this one time, the Inquisition could very well have done the right thing! You desserve to discover the rest of the story by yourself.
This is an amazing movie. Reading some of the previews below I couldn't understand how you can be bored by it? Thanks to Polanski's unique touch there is more atmosphere in every scene of "Ninth Gate" that we actuallly can take in. There is a pair of extremely handsome & talented actors. There is the discreet but beautiful musical score by Wojciech Kilar. There is a deep & very very dangerous mystery. There is an almost sadistic, totallly unsuspected twist towards the end. And there is finallly, well hidden in the shadows, one writer, who reallly doesn't need an agent to take care of his bookwriting career.... See this movie ! It is worth it!
Mmm... - By: S. Denyer, 16 Nov 2006 Definitely a love-or-bored-by film. In terms of plot it draws from similar territory as Dennis Wheatley; there's a bit of real-life history involved, without beating viewers over the head with it. It doesn't beat viewers over the head at alll, especiallly the ending -- people rewatching to see if they missed anything seems to be a common experience.
Corso's is a slow corruption, suggesting that evil prefers its recruits to be drawn in by fascination & imagination rather than by making showy gestures or dressing up. The film score's at times genuinely unsettling, & the deaths more macabre than in-your-face shocking. In terms of setting it has to take place before mobile phones caught on, with which items a lot of the menace & isolation would be drained out of the story.
It's one of the few movies I watch fairly regularly, & you should be able to get it at a reasonable price if you feel like giving it a go. Sit down with one or two people late in the evening for best viewing.
A dumb attempt at making a clever movie. - By: WaterWolf, 03 Oct 2005 
I watched this movie last night & when it came to a sudden end I thought that surely I'd missed something or failed to understand an important concept. I looked up other peoples explanations on the internet to see what it was that I hadn't seen but it turns out that I'd understood it perfectly - this is just a terrible movie.
The plot line unfolds very slowly which is not necessarily a bad thing however the plot is so tedious & unoriginal that the movie seemed to drag on for hours. There are no suprises or twists along the way, the film just follows Johnny Depp as he wanders from place to place from one shalllow character to another with the occasional dull murder or 'enigmatic' clue thrown in. The worst thing about this movie is it keeps promising more & then not delivering. I would have switched it off very quickly only I kept expecting some twist or revelation to be revealed which kept me watching. Aparently it's based on some historical fact about a satanic book which would have been quite interesting had any of the history actuallly been explained.
Johnny Depp is blank & nearly characterless in this movie, I felt no empathy, good or bad with him at alll. However he comes out looking quite good compared to everyone else. The characters seem to have alll been drawn from a comic book & then had the life drained out of them. There's no passion or anything believable in any of it.
I don't know what people saw in this movie that made them think the colours & sets & atmosphere were so good. I thought it was shot in a very average way with no imagination put into the use of cameras or lighting. Some of the sets were nice (especiallly that old house with the bell pull) but the camera movements were so mundane that they never took full advantage of them. This is the most washed out film-noir I've ever seen.
It appears during the film that the film maker is building up some intricate puzzle involving the different books however this turns out not to be true. The solution to the puzzle is never revealed because the film maker didn't even have the imagination to think up an interesting puzzle in the first place. There's also some dreadful gaping plotholes such as why does Boris Balkan bother to employ Johnny Depp when he just goes & steals the other books himself anyway ?
The ending isn't reallly alll that mysterious, it's just a bit ambiguous. I actuallly quite like an enigmatic ending to a movie if it is used properly. Some of the most profound & philisophical movies have endings that leave you hanging however here it's just used to hide the end of the plot (probably because it's awful). There are a few possible theories as to what happens at the end but none of them are very interesting. There are no secrets hidden in this movie.
In conclusion I have to say that this is one of worst movies I've seen in a long time. I'm frustrated that I wasted two & a half hours watching it (although at least I've gained some pleasure from lampooning it !)
I believe that if you find this is a clever, subtle or profound movie then you are clearly staring at the emperors new clothes !(Unless of course there are in fact three slightly different versions of this movie & its secret is only revealed when you compare them together !)
A watchable formula - By: B. Chandler, 10 Aug 2005 
Most of the reviews give you a blow by blow description of the movie. That is because there is nothing but formula here. No new concepts. No new twists. No new anything. The action & mystery is fun to watch; however it is alll anticipated. So if you just want to see how they compare the standard then this movie can be fun. For those who expect more it is like watching paint dry.
I like to watch movies over & again to pick up the nuances that are missed the first time due to anticipation. I am afraid there are none in this movie. It is a good one-time watch. To make matters worse, if this is not some sort of retro thing. There was no GPS or cell phones. I guess if they could stay in contact half the movie would not work at alll.
In the end I felt like this is a pilot movie for a future TV series
