Polanski thus concentrates on the journey. Corso meets up with all sorts of loons in his quest to unlock the puzzle within the book, all of whom are grandiose and most of whom try to kill him, end up dead or both. He gets into trouble endlessly, but this young blonde woman is always there to get him out of it. An otherworldly protector, she stares at him with demonic, catlike eyes, but he doesn't ever notice because he's so entranced by her extremely bushy eyebrows, which are so thick that they don't need to be plucked so much as mowed. Polanski clearly knows noir and horror, proof of which can be found in Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby respectively, and he skillfully plays around with genre conventions.
Characters smoke like chimneys around ancient tomes and the dialogue is suitably hard-boiled.
The story unfolds at a slow pace appropriate for a movie about books, though it does languish at times. Luckily, Polanski and his cinematographer fill every shot and every scene with enough beautiful detail so that even when the script lags, the film is gorgeous to watch. Depp keeps the film grounded with another fine performance, the music is appropriately foreboding and just about every scene is individually entertaining, though it never adds up to much. This meticulous pacing continues right up until the climax, at which point Polanski abandons any sense of restraint and blows the lid off. A few false endings later, a left hook drops us into the credits.