Polanski's latest lays out the groundwork for a competent supernatural mystery flick, embellished by his typically high production values and the ill-used but intermittently effective visual effect Johnny Depp, and then flies on autopilot for a while, as the director indulges his wife Emanuelle Seigner with a superfluous spirit-sidekick role. This lapse in piloting sucks all pressure/suspense out of the theater and starts the movie on a downward spiral toward the fiery whimper of its amazingly careless non-ending. Depp plays a somnolent chain-smoking rare-book-hunting Indiana Jones type employed by dark-arts dabbler Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to retrieve the second and third of the three extant copies of a medieval manuscript containing the secrets to successful Satan-summoning; his adventures are interestingly illustrated and initially engrossing but fail to amount to anything. As The Ninth Gate drags on it becomes clear that its primary value is to renew one's appreciation of the dozens of more successful movies it calls to mind, from Polanski's own superior detective story Chinatown and occult flick Rosemary's Baby, to the more accomplished and meaningful mysteries of Eyes Wide Shut, the infinitely more entertaining (even Keanu-compensating) satanizing of The Devil's Advocate, and to the more sustained and thoughtful spiritual mumbo-journey of Ghost Dog.