Review – The Ninth Gate

Here’s what I’ve been wanting for awhile now: a nice, over-wrought cinematic exploration of the powers of darkness. It helped a lot that early on the plot centered around a rare books appraiser and his client’s quest to establish the authenticity (or lack of same) of an antique text supposedly co-written by Lucifer himself. I found the script intriguing as long as it stuck to the ancient books. But when the movie started to devolve into a Satan-related caper flick, I started to lose interest. Though I found the ending somewhat weak, overall this effort from banned-in-the-USA director Roman Polanski is better than your average devil picture. Mildly amusing