Movie Review: The Ghost Writer

Ewan McGregor plays a writer who tackles and difficult — and possibly deadly — assignment.

“The Ghost Writer” is a deviously intriguing thriller about a British politician, his brittle brilliant wife and a strictly-for-hire memoirist who finds out more about his subject than he’d bargained for.

It is also a film by Roman Polanski.

Polanski, who won a 2002 Oscar for the Holocaust-themed The Pianist, is in a playful, prickly mood here that recalls his early work on Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown. Ewan McGregor grabs and runs with his juiciest role in years as the Ghost, a writer hired to pen the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), the unseated British prime minister now taking refuge in America after being accused of war crimes back home. Any resemblance between Lang and Tony Blair seems purely intentional, since Harris, who wrote the script with Polanski, is on the record as becoming disillusioned with Blair after the PM allegedly teamed up with President Bush to hand over suspected terrorists for torture by the CIA. One reviewer of Harris’ book cheekily labeled it The Blair Snitch Project.

Like Polanski, Lang is in exile. The former PM is holed up in a Cape Cod beach house with his manipulative wife (Olivia Williams) and an executive assistant (Kim Cattrall) who doubles as his mistress. Don’t be thrown by the Sex and the City star’s Brit accent — she was born in Liverpool. And it’s fun to see Cattrall play covert sexuality for a change.

The Ghost knows he’s in over his head. His specialty is ghosting for rock stars and other celebs du trash. There’s another chilling detail: The writer who started the book with Lang has been found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Since Polanski couldn’t travel outside certain legal jurisdictions, he used Berlin for London and the island of Sylt in the North Sea to fill in for Martha’s Vineyard. But the kick in this sexy, addictive thriller comes in the telling. As the media swarm outside Lang’s beach house, everyone inside feels a trap closing in. No one but Polanski could find the adrenaline rush in such maddening claustrophobia. There are moments when you damn near jump out of your seat as the Ghost snoops around looking for incriminating truth and a chance to have it off with the wife of his subject.

All credit to a finely tuned Brosnan for packing so much intensity and wayward wit into his scenes with McGregor. Their verbal duels make for a dazzling game of cat-and-mouse.

Polanski’s skill with actors hasn’t waned. Even the smallest roles are expertly played. Timothy Hutton scores as Lang’s American lawyer, and Jim Belushi nails the role of the Ghost’s scandal-hungry publisher. Best of all is Tom Wilkinson as Paul Emmet, a Harvard law professor whom the Ghost believes holds the key to Lang’s links with the CIA. After an action-packed pursuit of the Ghost on a ferry, the movie ends on a note of shocking challenge. You can feel Polanski’s excitement to be working on a film that echoes 1970s classics such as Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View. Whatever happens to Polanski in real life, his reel life is in excellent shape. The Ghost Writer is one of his diabolical best.

Release Date: February 19, 2010 (limited; expands: March 5)

Genre: Thriller

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Studio: Summit Entertainment

Director: Roman Polanski

Screenwriter: Roman Polanski, Robert Harris

Trailer

Movie Website: TheGhost-RomanPolanski.com

Actors/Actresses: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Eli Wallach

Our Verdict:

Polanski knows how the genre works, though. He knows it’s not the raving lunatics who frighten, but the only slightly “off” normal people — a gardener, a cook, a chauffeur. He realizes it’s not what you see that’s horrifying, but what you don’t. (The film’s last moments — its best — center on something that happens off-screen. Darkly dramatic, “The Ghost Writer” is Roman Polanski’s most accessible film since “Chinatown.” And when you really look at its themes — public faces, private lies, media frenzies and celebrity self-pity — it may be even more relevant than its audiences, and its director, realize.