Review: Polanski casts well in 'Ghost Writer'

Photo by Photo: Guy Farrandis

(Left to right) KIM CATTRELL and EWAN McGREGOR star in THE GHOST WRITER

Photo by Photo: Guy Farrandis

(Left to right) KIM CATTRELL and EWAN McGREGOR star in THE GHOST WRITER

The Ghost Writer

When a successful British ghost writer, The Ghost, agrees to complete the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, his agent assures him it's ...

Rating: PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference

Length: 128 minutes

Released: February 19, 2010 NY/LA

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Eli Wallach

Director: Roman Polanski

Writer: Roman Polanski, Robert Harris

More info and showtimes »

If Roman Polanski has great insights on the notion of exile, he did not put them on-screen in "The Ghost Writer."

What the director, a fugitive from America for decades and now under house arrest in Switzerland, did put on-screen is a faithful, fairly absorbing adaptation of Robert Harris' political thriller "The Ghost."

The movie pokes along at times, in contrast with the snappy pace of Harris' novel. Yet Polanski cast his film well - particularly with Pierce Brosnan as a Tony Blair-esque former British prime minister, a supporting player in the story but a larger-than-life figure who enlivens and dominates "The Ghost Writer" every time he enters the picture.

After the drowning death of a longtime aide overseeing the memoirs of ex-PM Adam Lang (Brosnan), the publisher hires a veteran ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) to punch up the tedious tome.

This guy without a name - referenced in the credits merely as "The Ghost" and often called "man" by Lang, who has trouble remembering people's names - arrives at the New England estate where the ex-PM and his people are holed up just as huge news hits (it's Martha's Vineyard in the novel, some posh unidentified island here).

Lang has been accused of turning terrorist suspects in Pakistan over to the CIA for torture, prompting protests, calls for a war-crimes trial and a flurry at his publishing house to transform the book into a tell-all account of the war on terror.

Olivia Williams is perfectly matched with Brosnan as Lang's ferociously intelligent and sardonic wife, while Kim Cattrall is all crisp efficiency and cat-fight-ish rivalry as Lang's chief aide and presumed mistress.

With Harris as screenwriter, the film adheres closely to his story, though he and Polanski add a few more conventional cloak-and-dagger tidbits than the novel contains.

Polanski also injects some macabre touches - among them a dubious ending that elicits chuckles partly because of its wicked humor, partly because it's a rather silly and dismissive send-off to the film's protagonist.

Then again, McGregor is a bit of a blank throughout, continually outshone by co-stars, even those with barely more than walk-on roles. That may nicely suit a ghostwriter whose own voice is subsumed so he can chronicle the lives of others.

Yet considering that McGregor's at the center of almost every scene in the film, it makes for a pretty thin leading man. We're supposed to care what happens to this guy, but ghostlike, McGregor is a wispy presence, subordinate to almost everyone else on screen.

That includes Tom Wilkinson as a slick, haughty academic with CIA connections and James Belushi as a fiercely funny bull of a publishing executive whose company paid $10 million for Lang's memoirs.

Brosnan and Williams are the real highlights, both such dynamos that you feel their absence and yearn for their return during the long stretches when McGregor is mucking about on his own.

The film showcases one of the best scenes in the book, as McGregor's ghost uses a car-navigation system to retrace the fatal path of his predecessor.

It's a cool sequence, though as other movies inevitably toy with the technology, Hollywood no doubt will find a way to turn it into a cliche.

© 2010, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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