SOURCE: Strick, Philip. Review of The Ninth Gate, by Roman Polanski. Sight and Sound 10, no. 9 (September 2000): 45-6.

In the following review, Strick comments that The Ninth Gate is a technically well-made film, but feels that it fails as an adaptation of the novel El Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

[In The Ninth Gate,] Dean Corso, a rare books specialist, is hired by demonologist Boris Balkan to authenticate his copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows, a book which reputedly reveals a means of entry to the Underworld. Corso intends to compare the two existing copies with Balkan's volume, whose previous owner, Andrew Telfer, committed suicide. Corso discovers that Telfer's widow, Liana, is determined to recover the book. His apartment is ransacked, and a colleague temporarily looking after the book is murdered.

In Spain Corso learns from the antiquarians the Ceniza brothers that some...