THE GHOST WRITER (2010) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Roman Polanski
Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams,
Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton,
James Belushi, Jon Bernthal, Eli Wallach
Ewan McGregor plays a character identified in the credits as "The Ghost". He's the ghost writer, hired for reasons he can't quite fathom to polish up the memoirs of a retired British prime minister (a testy, combative Pierce Brosnan), who's about to face war-crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. Protecting the P.M. and competing for influence are his shrewd, long-suffering wife (Olivia Williams) and his coldly efficient aide and apparent mistress (Kim Cattrall). None of these people can be trusted, and when the ghost finds out his predecessor might have been murdered, he starts to do a little investigative work on his own. It all plays out like a deliberately paced Hitchcock movie, and if there are few big surprises, you can still appreciate the skill with which it's done. And there's the odd sense of displacement that goes with a story that's set mostly in the Northeastern United States, but couldn't be filmed there because of Polanski's persistent travel restrictions. 93-year-old Eli Wallach does a feisty bit as a local who knows the tides and wonders why the body of the previous ghost washed up where it did on the beach.
