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Ninth Gate (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (14th September 2009). |
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The Film
 I'm partial to "Repulsion" (1965) and "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) Roman Polanski rather than this later works, but "The Ninth Gate" harks back to his thrillers of days gone, with a European sensibility of using tone and pace rather than resorting to the American Hollywood standard of clichés to spook viewers. Polanski crafts an intriguing thriller that manages to hold up a decade on and gets better after repeated viewings. Polanski focuses his lens on an interesting story, characters and uses fascinating locations to bring his vision to life. While the film didn't exactly set the box office on fire, it has, however managed to amass a decent audience on home video over the years as it makes its debut in high-definition. Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a rare book dealer, despite his crude reputation he is recruited by Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), Balkan has recently acquired the Demon Text, a rare book, one of only three existing copies. Corso is employed to investigate the legitimacy of the book and compare it to the other three copies, but Corso finds himself deep in a dark conspiracy that threatens not only the book but his life as well, when a mysterious girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) helps him through his journey, Corso starts to uncover some disturbing secrets held by the book. Polanski draws viewers in from the opening scene and the haunting manner in which the film's credits roll out, from this point on we are sucked into the rabbit hole as we follow our protagonist around Europe as he investigates the legitimacy of the book, the film's tone is almost film noir-esque, which poses a fresh way to structure what is essentially a thriller. It's also worth noting that Polanski likes to hide clues throughout the film that help reveal underlying meanings, I've had many discussions about whether Depp's character is in fact the devil, and the involvement of the girl, who remains unnamed throughout the film, she is wherever Corso is, her presence leads one to believe that she may be a demon that's looking over Corso... another argument is that it could also be the other way around, that Corso is the demon and the girl is actually Satan... (you can see this argument also rages on the discussion boards of the film's IMDB page) whatever the case it's in the interpretation that makes this film so countlessly watchable. Some may mistaken the "European" style of the film's pace to mean that its boring, well there aren't a lot of "thrilling" sequences in this film, it doesn't move at brisk speed and bides its time to build up tension. "The Ninth Gate" is definitely a slow boil but it's certainly never boring, in fact Polanski fills his frame with enough intrigue that it keeps you glued to the screen. Johnny Depp's performance alone is enough to warrant a viewing, as he delivers a fairly solid turn as Corso, it's actually quite refreshing to see Depp play a character that's not quirky and strange such as his other iconic turns as Ichabod Crane, Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka among others. The supporting players all do their bit but none are particularly memorable aside from Frank Langella who is always dependable. Emmanuelle Seigner plays her role a bit flat, only truly coming into her own at the end of film, perhaps she's just not that comfortable with the English language? Also I've never thought much of Lena Olin to begin with, she doesn't really do anything here that a soap opera actor couldn't have done. If you've seen this film before, then you'll already know that the ending is somewhat predicable but mostly weak considering the build-up to it, that's the one of the major elements (along with the lackluster supporting cast) which stops the film from truly becoming a thriller masterpiece... However I enjoyed the journey in which Depp and Polanski took me on that it almost doesn't matter that the ending was weak... almost.
Video
Presented in a widescreen ratio of 2.40:1 this high-definition transfer is in 1080p 24/fps and mastered in AVC MPEG-4 compression. Before I get into the meat of this image review, I have to say I went into the film frustrated, frustrated by a single white speck that was in the upper right hand corner of the film and it remained there from the opening frame through the credits and into the first scene with Depp, for a while I was afraid my TV had a dead pixel all of a sudden... not a good start, that damn speck was actually distracting beyond belief! And that was just the tip of the iceberg, this image was a relative mixed bag. The majority of the picture was soft and lacking in intricate detail, backgrounds looked murky and hazy. Colors look a little dull including reds (just look at the fire at the end of the film) it's lackluster to say the least. Blacks appear a bit crushed and appear noisy. There are some specks and dirt, if anything this transfer is not doing any justice to Darius Khondji's work. On the plus side the transfer does look a bit better than the previous DVD release. At least skin tones and some textures look good as do some close-ups and I couldn't spot on any compression problems or edge-enhancement (thankfully), but this film is in serious need of a decent remastering.
Audio
A single English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, I wasn't as underwhelmed by the audio as I was the image, but it certainly wasn't reference quality either. Dialogue comes across great, clear and distortion free and there are some ambient sounds that help place you within the environments but the track was lacking in depth and remained mostly front heavy for the most part. The score and some of the more intense scenes at the end used up the surrounds well... as far as 7.1 soundtracks go this was a fairly weak entry. At best it's an average soundtrack that only just does its job. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
Lionsgate has ported over the DVD extras, we got an audio commentary, a featurette, some storyboard selections, a gallery, a teaser and theatrical trailer as well as a bonus trailer. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up is a feature-length audio commentary by the film's director Roman Polanski. Polanski provides a fairly standard track covering all the usual topics from the book, it's adaptation, the casting of the film and offers up some production trivia. He's mostly candid and offers up plenty for fans of the director to sink their teeth into, including the tone of the film, it's pace and also on the visual elements that make it so intriguing among other things. The track is worth exploring if you're a fan of the filmmaker and this film, otherwise it would have been nice to include some other cast and crew members as well to talk about their involvement in the film. A single and very brief promo featurette is included and runs for 2 minutes 2 seconds, it was created to promote the film. Seriously what was even the point of including this clip? Why can't we have a decent making-of instead of this promotional fluff? Skip it, this clip isn't worth your time nor is worth repeated viewings if you so happen to waist your initial 2 minutes watching it. There are also six storyboard selections, here you can explore some of the film's storyboards and script excerpts. "Satanic Drawings" is a gallery of 20 images, these are the pages from the book used in the film, the etchings are pretty cool and although the feature is scant it's neat that this was included in better detail. The disc also features the film's original teaser trailer entitled "Fire Gates" which runs for 44 seconds and also the original theatrical trailer which runs for 1 minute 49 seconds. In a surprising turn Lionsgate has included only a single bonus trailer instead of the usual 15 minutes of previews before the majority of their Blu-rays, why can't they all be like this? The bonus trailer is for: - "The Eye" which runs for 2 minutes 10 seconds. The disc also allows you to bookmark your favorite scenes.
Overall
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