Roman Polanki's The Ninth Gate

Watched a film by Mia Farrow's good friend, Roman Polanski, The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp as a rare books guy.

I thought it was pretty good, a low key thriller with supernatural overtones.

It reminded me of Orson Welles' Mr Arkadin, aka Confidential Report. A guy who collects extremely valuable rare books about the devil has a copy of a 17th century book allegedly co-authored by Satan himself. Only three copies are known to exist. He thinks that only one is authentic and the other two are fakes and he hires Johnny Depp to go to the owners of the other two copies and confirm this.

I wasn't sure if it would be more like Rosemary's Baby or more like The DaVinci Code. A little of each, really.

It was pretty good. Had a lot of cigarette smoking in it which seemed strange, people smoking around extremely valuable rare books. Like the episode of The Andy Griffith Show where the dry cleaner was always smoking at work. Seems like it would stink everything up.

Filmed in France, Portugal and Spain. Some scenes were set in New York but had to be filmed elsewhere, obviously.

It was interesting. I liked the supporting cast, the book owners Depp encounters. There are several murders. The ending wasn't as revelatory as it might have been.

Has a Rolls Royce, a Land Rover and a Dodge Viper, a karate fight, a couple of sex scenes.