When I mentioned my anticipation for Roman Polaski’s new political thriller The Ghost Writer in conversation with a friend, they frowned upon me like I had said something seriously wrong. At first I thought it was a reaction to Polanski’s famed criminal convictions from the 1970s – the man’s a fugitive paedophile-rapist, don’t you know — but it turns out that had nothing to do with it. More innocently, it was because they had confused the film with Nicolas Cage’s awful action film The Ghost Rider.
“No no, it’s called The Ghost WRI-ter, not Rider!” I quickly replied. “This is certain to be a much, much better film than that nonsense. We’re talking about Polanski here; he’s got a real knack for sophisticated and engaging mysteries. I mean, this is the guy who made Chinatown! It’s going to be great!”
Boy oh boy, how wrong was I?
This lazily plotted and performed political snoozer has to be one of the most disappointing films I’ve seen all year. The premise, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel The Ghost, seems ripe with tension and mystique, but as the film so blatantly purports via its dull paint-by-numbers narrative, not everything is as it seems.
Ewan McGregor (Angels & Demons) stars as a nameless ghost-writer (get it!?) assigned to write the memoirs of controversial British Prime Minister Tony Blair Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan; Remember Me). Accused of war crimes due to his involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Lang takes refuge on remote island of America’s East coast — presumably a stone’s throw away from Shutter Island – and invites his Ghost over to complete the memoirs. I say ‘complete’ because it is revealed early on that the body of Lang’s first ghost-writer was found face-down on the beach, supposedly the result of an accidental suicide while travelling on the Island’s ferry to the mainland. Accident you say? Yeah, right…
While we obviously know better, it takes McGregor almost an hour to work out something’s up. In fact, the entire film adheres to this steady-as-she-goes pace, with one chase sequence playing out so sluggishly, it’s akin to watching the elderly race on mobility gofers. Perhaps if the film retained the claustrophobic mood established by cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s striking blue hues and Alexandre Desplat’s ominous score, such a leisurely pace might have swelled up a solid sense of dread. But no; a pug’s puppy fat has more tension than this.
The problem with Harris and Polanski’s screenplay is that it’s chock-full of simplistic mystery clichés you’d expect to see in a serialized TV crime drama. The dialogue is solid, but the story itself is persistently underwhelming, such as when the film’s first big revelation arrives by way of a Google search. That’s not “up with the times”. That’s just plain ol’ lazy.
Not since the Star Wars prequels has McGregor looked this disinterested on screen, injecting zero personality into his spineless character. He seems about as invested in the mystery as we are, meandering his way around the island looking either cold or confused. It’s a dramatic highpoint when he exhibits both.
Pierce Brosnan escapes unharmed as the Lang, a role that might have had more of a reality bite if played by Blair’s doppelgänger Michael Sheen. Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense) delivers the film’s most interesting performance as Mrs. Lang, but it’s Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall as Adam’s peculiarly accented secretary you should really be on the look out for. You can’t miss her; she’s the one hamming it up as though it’s an episode of Days of Our Lives.
So in a cruel ironic twist, it turns out The Ghost Writer hasn’t much over The Ghost Rider after all. At least I didn’t almost fall asleep in the latter. But much like a parent says to their child when they’ve really slipped up: I’m not angry with Polanski, just bitterly disappointed.
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