The Ghost Writer

If you didn’t already know it, it would be unlikely that you’d identify Roman Polanski as the director of this stylishly atmospheric but improbable political thriller based on a novel by former political journalist, Robert Harris. 

The always-engaging Ewan McGregor takes the lead as an unnamed writer assigned to re-vamp the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister after his (the writer’s) predecessor is found drowned on a beach near the former's Massachusetts retreat. The writer finds himself drawn into a web of personal intrigue as on the one hand Lang is accused by a former close political ally, Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh), of war crimes stemming from his involvement in US anti-terrorist acts and on the other, Lang’s affair with his assistant, Amelia (Kim Cattrall), provokes his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) into a vengeful frame of mind. There’s potential here for Polanski to indulge his fondness for the dark side of human nature but the director doesn’t go there and anyone attracted by his name in the credits will be disappointed if that is what they’re looking for.

The parallel with the Tony Blair, George W. Bush and Haliburton nexus is there for all to see but the story is too much in the classic mainstream Hollywood thriller style to have any real purchase in this respect.  As such it is technically well-turned rather than compelling.  Polanski keeps a sense of menace hovering over proceedings but it’s all rather manufactured.  At the one third mark the ghost writer conveniently discovers a bunch of photographs and documents that for some unexplained reason has him pedalling down to a nearby shack where Eli Wallach conveniently points out that his predecessor’s death was no accident. Because it's Eli Wallach and he looks so scurvy we know that he must be telling the truth.  Later the same predecessor’s GPS conveniently leads him to the house of one of Lang’s former colleagues who because he is played by Tom Wilkinson and he looks so respectable we know is dissembling. And the film’s ending is unacceptable.  Given the protagonist’s instinct for self-preservation to this point it is nothing short of suicidal and jars with the sophisticated tone to which the film has aspired and generally achieved. A Three Days of The Condor (Sidney Pollack 1975) type ending would have been so much better. 

The film provides a solid two hours of entertainment but for Polanski fans will prove to be somewhat of an anomaly.

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