If you go
“Ghost Writer”
4 out of 5 stars
Stars: Ewan McGregor Pierce Brosnan Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall
Director: Roman Polanski
Rated PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference.
Running time: 128 minutes
“Ghost Writer” is about a writer in an isolated house trying to work in the face of overwhelming international forces. Reportedly, director-writer Roman Polanski completed work on his new political thriller while under house arrest in Europe for renewed extradition proceedings against him by the United States for his 1970s statutory rape case. It’s an interesting coincidence regarding this taut, smart drama, which won him a best director award at the Berlin Film Festival last weekend.
Known for the dark, paranoid brilliance of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown” and “The Pianist” among others, the veteran filmmaker’s latest again delves his preferred theme of sinister conspiracy. But though this one is set in a realistic context, against the macro institutions that control the world today, the character-focused piece crackles from the micro-level mood and precisely ratcheted-up suspense Polanski builds around Ewan McGregor’s unnamed protagonist.
McGregor delivers a compelling, relatable performance playing the hapless title character. He has been hired to go to a remote Martha’s Vineyard mansion to replace a previous writer, who recently turned up dead under strange circumstances. The job is to collaborate on the memoirs of ex-British Prime Minister Adam Lang, an obviously fictionalized version of Tony Blair (played with slick authority by Pierce Brosnan, obliterating memories of his “half-horse” turn this month in “Percy Jackson”).
Just as he begins work to retool the previous writer’s first draft, which is protected by suspiciously strict layers of security, a huge news story explodes: Lang is under investigation by the war crimes court at the Hague. The charges are that he initiated illegal operations involving kidnapping and torture against alleged terrorists while in office.
By accident, the hard-drinking, apolitical ghost writer uncovers not only clues to his predecessor’s demise, but also to Lang’s hidden background. The everyman also finds himself in an overly familiar relationship with the former leader’s brilliant wife Ruth (“An Education”‘s Olivia Williams) and in an adversarial one with his unusually close chief aide Amelia (Kim Cattrall, wielding a weak accent despite her English roots). Soon — uh-oh! — the ghost writer learns too much about ominous things like the CIA and the military-industrial complex.
Unlike February’s other suspense thriller by a legendary elder director, Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” Polanski makes the heart pound through a more cohesive, believable story that has the benefit of being topical, too. And somehow this “Ghost” haunts without needing conspicuous camerawork or graphic, shocking visuals.
