The Ghost
In anyone else's hands, this reasonably diverting political thriller may be torn to shreds for its eye-rolling conclusion.
The project Roman Polanski was editing when he was rightly arrested after flouting the law for decades is a curious affair. In anyone else's hands, this reasonably diverting political thriller may be torn to shreds for its eye-rolling conclusion, but The Ghost will likely be lauded for Polanski's social commentary, or something.
The director adapted the source novel with the author himself, Robert Harris, a former Fleet Street journalist who set tongues wagging with this thinly veiled attack on Tony Blair. Pierce Brosnan is suitably smarmy as disgraced former British PM Adam Lang, who can go from charming to flesh-crawlingly harsh in a second. Lang is residing in his stunning, isolated Massachusetts holiday home when the news breaks in London that the former foreign secretary is publically, and officially, accusing him of war crimes.
On hand is Lang's newly recruited ghost writer, hurriedly hired after the previous memoir scribe washed up dead on the island's shore (uh oh!). Ewan McGregor is an actor with enormous cinematic appeal, but his accent and delivery as the ghost is distractingly poor, and it's left to the masterful Brosnan to command the story. While the international crisis unfolds, Lang finds himself under virtual house arrest, and continues to dole out his past to the writer. McGregor quickly becomes suspicious when his memories don't quite add up, and using clues handily left behind from his predecessor, delves into the origins of Lang's political career. As the ghost can't get to know the fake and brittle Lang, he confides in an embittered Mrs Lang, magnificently handled by Olivia Williams. The actress is the only one who doesn't seem to be bumbling along with the pointed whodunnit, creating a lonely character who spends her days walking alongside security on windswept beaches or sniping at Kim Cattrall's glamorous and devoted secretary.
It's a moody thriller, well-paced, with tension wrought from the simplest of things - for example, the use of a sat nav - but an exasperating ending leaves a sour note after enjoying the striking set pieces. Before then, Polanski more than manages to polish this turd of a plot.
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