'Gate': Enter at Your Own Risk By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 10, 2000

Johnny Depp plays a macho bookworm in "The Ninth Gate." (Artisan Entertainment)

You mean that totally hot French chick Polanski married in 1989? So, how is it?

Man, is it sweet. Awesome, really.

Really? The movie's that good?

Oh, the movie! I thought you were talking about Emmanuelle Seigner's bod. Polanski can't seem to resist showing it since he met her (see "Frantic" and "Bitter Moon" if you don't believe me). By the time she gets naked here, it's almost torture after two hours of watching her run around in baggy jeans and a surplus army jacket. To tell the truth, the movie's kind of like the actress: gorgeous to look at but not much going on upstairs.

Uh-huh. What's the movie about?

Good question. It's based on a novel, "El Club Dumas," by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Depp plays this bookish tough guy named Corso. He's sort of a bounty hunter who traffics in rare books for people who have too much time and money on their hands, kind of like the love child of Indiana Jones and Marian the librarian. Anyway, one of his clients is this scary-looking dude named Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) who collects books about the devil and wants Corso to authenticate his copy of "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows," one of three remaining copies of a 17th-century satanic text whose engravings supposedly hold the power to summon the devil, but only when properly interpreted, like a VCR owner's manual.

Okay, so he and Seigner get busy after fighting off these cool F/X demons that come to life out of the book?

Um, not exactly. First, Corso gets to do the deed with Liana Telfer (Lena Olin), this other creepy, like, nympho chick whose late husband sold Balkan the devil book before he hung himself. She bites, too.

Cool.

Then Corso leaves for Europe to get away from that freak and check in with the owners of the other two copies of the book, while all his friends and business contacts keep dropping around him like flies. Along the way, some Dennis Rodman type with blond hair (Tony Amoni) keeps trying to run him over, and at the last moment Seigner always shows up to save Corso's skinny butt. He doesn't even know her name, but he senses something not quite right about her anyway. For one thing, her eyes are this really hypnotic shade of green and she can fight better than Jackie Chan and, um, oh yeah, she kind of floats down stairs.

Whoa. Sounds like "The Matrix."

Yeah. Actually, there aren't a whole lot of special effects here, but the movie still looks really amazing, kind of like PBS crossed with MTV. And if you like books, all that stuff about fine leather binding and engravings and first editions and counterfeits is sort of, ahem, "fascinating," I guess. The main problem is that Polanski kind of paints himself into a corner with all this mumbo jumbo about summoning the devil from the depths of hell. As Corso gets closer to uncovering the secret of the "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows," you kind of half expect Satan maybe to come out and shake his hand and give him a check for a million dollars like Regis Philbin or something.

That would be lame. Exactly. Which is why it's so disappointing for the director of "Rosemary's Baby" to have to stoop to something as desperate as pyrotechnics and nudity. For a second there, I thought I was watching a Motley Crue video.

Dude! Excellent!

THE NINTH GATE (R, 133 minutes) – Contains obscenity, nudity, sex, suicide, strangling, shooting, flames and exploration of the occult.