A rare book dealer from Manhattan, Dean Corso (Depp), is hired by a sinister collector of occult books, Boris Balkan (Langella), to search for a rare book called The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, supposedly written by Satan himself. There are three copies, and only one of them is real. Balkan owns one copy, and it's up to Corso to try to find the other two.Roman Polanski is known for occult movies((mdash))Rosemary's Baby for instance. He's also usually a pretty good, if odd, director. This time he's just forgotten one important part of the movie((mdash))any actual point. The film meanders through its 132-minute length without any sense at all of a direction, purpose, or even having been fully thought out by the writer. There is just no pay off in the movie. It's good looking, and the direction is generally good. It's just that I came out of this film without any real sense of why I bothered.