The Ghost Writer

Awesome

source: The Ghost Writer

Ewan McGregor, as the ghost, and Olivia Williams, as his client's wife, have real chemistry, which makes the time they spend at the beach house exciting and intensive. While he manages to come across as boyish and grown-up, clever and confused at the same time, she is very hot in her own very cool sort of way. Unfortunately, everything else pales by comparison with this half-hour stretch of attraction and adultery: The seen-before thriller plot Polanski himself seems bored with. Pierce Brosnan, whose half-dozen scenes amount to little more than a guest appearance. Even Kim Cattrall, in her first serious screen appearance since "The Devil and Daniel Webster", is little more than (admittedly classy) decoration. Overall, the tedious bits outweigh the thrilling bits, which is why this is only a five out of ten for me despite its obvious production value.

***SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!*** A good thriller--better than the flashy, over-emphatic Shutter Island--but not more than that. Still, good is good and I'm not knocking it. I enjoyed the movie. Brosnan was really impressive. It was shrewd of Polanski to cast him (he needed a star to give the small role heft) and it took balls for Brosnan to take the role. Also, the directing was usually first rate and had some really creepy effects. BUT a few big problems, which don't make THE GHOST WRITER a bad movie, prevent it from being better than good. I won't write further about the good things in it (others have done so) but here's why I was disappointed and why I give it no higher than 7 out of 10. (REMEMBER SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT!) When the Ghost is given the room of his dead predecessor whose belongings have not been cleared out, it's a tip-off that's too obvious. First, the crowd that runs this house would have gone through it with a fine tooth comb and got rid of everything a.s.a.p. Second, we know that once the Ghost moves in he's going to find something incriminating. Then there's the ending. Why does the Ghost tell the wife what he's found (which I assume is what's in the note he passes to her)? Given her company's record of murder and its attempted murder of him, it's like a suicide note. And the staging of the final scene is so unoriginal it's not worthy of Polanski. After the Ghost walks out of the frame and the camera stays put on the street, we know--if we've seen Hitchcock's FAMILY PLOT and other flicks that use the same device--that the street is waiting for a killer car to drive down it for you-know-what.

I watched this film last night. I'll admit to never being a huge Polanski fan, but I quite like Ewan McGregor so thought I'd give it a shot. What a mistake that was! I enjoy a good thriller, but this was nothing of the sort. The acting appeared incredibly wooden, almost comical in parts. The script felt as though it had been thrown together in a couple of hours. Appalling dialogue, unbelievably weak story, and duller than dullsville on a dull day. If that wasn't enough, the whole story was so astonishingly predictable. Really, for what was supposed to be a thriller, if they'd have painted a big red arrow above the guilty persons head it couldn't have been more obvious. I'm quite amazed to see the IMDb score for this film, and some of the positive reviews. Did I watch the same film? This is lazy film making at its worst, and I can only imagine it got made in the first place riding on Polanski's name. A truly truly awful movie. Avoid.

Polanski's adaptation of Robert Harris' novel is strong on atmosphere, humour and Hitchcockian tension, but is pure fantasy from start to finish. Although the allusions to Bush, Blair and Halliburton may lend the film an air of authenticity, the locations, drama and plot twists are a posse of Hollywood clichés. Most of the action takes place on a desolate, windswept island, to which ex-PM Adam Lang has retired, in order to write his memoirs - a classic thriller location, and a far cry from Tony Blair's Buckinghamshire estate. The meetings in motel rooms and clandestine discussions with 'the other side' are pure Cold War John Le Carre, whilst the ending zeroes in on a code breaking cliché which could have been lifted verbatim from a Famous Five novel. Polanski focuses on intrigue, but Harris' script cannot keep up; by half-way through the film, our hero 'The Ghost' has learnt almost all that he will ever know, and his consequent research consists of him being stonewalled by Lang and his old Professor, Paul Emmet, whilst founding a conspiracy theory on Intelligence gleaned from a Google Search. The Ghost, clearly unaware of recent Wikipedia hoaxes, states emphatically, 'It's true - it's on the internet'. Polanski guns for a big denouement, but unfortunately, it is only a slight variant on what we had known for most of the film. In such a talky film, it's up to Alexandre Desplat's Hermann-esquire score to do most of the work, a role that it fills impressively. Polanski's movie is certainly an enjoyable ride for the first hour and a half, but as it splutters towards a weak climax, where character and motivation come second and third to a supposedly neat plot 'twist', one wonders whether the journey had any point to it at all.

No doubt Roman Polansky knows how to build a gripping movie, with craft and wit, in this case a political thriller, where references to Blair and Bush are no so much explicit, but subtle enough to be perceived somehow. Reviews underlined a style resembling Hitchcock: indeed, the story proceeds, creating suspense, thrill, without appealing to excessive action or shock, although never reaching Hitchcock's subtlety of insight and mystery, both in characters and situations. Mostly, the plot proves some loose ends as the craftily prepared intrigue seems to come to a hasty ending, leading to a finale which does not appear up to the great potential and high expectations of its previous development. Convincing and well-focused performances by the whole cast, especially by Ewan McGregor who keeps a high-level performance, never abusing his intriguing role, but thoroughly contained, Pierce Brosnan proves good in his part, although his past stereotyped roles make it difficult to see him credible as a former prime minister, Olivia Williams as his wife Ruth delivers a smart and talented performance. Quite interesting are some minor characters, such as the members of the service, or the old man living on the island, who enhance, despite or probably thanks to their more silent presence, the mysterious atmosphere of the story.

I am astounded at the number of positive reviews this is receiving. I see a lot of films and not infrequently I see films that I generally do not like for one reason or another but really enjoy or respect due to certain aspects or qualities they contain. Not so here. This was just boring, boring, boring with almost no tension or drama and the "plot" was simply laughable. The climax was would have been sleep inducing had you not been wondering why anyone would really care about the secret that was revealed. The final scene was like something out of a high school project that the kids waited until the night before to script and film. A more minor gripe is the multiple, annoying commercials for BMW. I am appalled this is being compared to Hitchcock's work. Some of the shots were impressive, the atmospherics were good and the performances good to average but I simply did not care because there was no story or intrigue to hold it all together. I cannot recommend this as even a video rental unless you are perhaps doing a study of one of the principals work.

SO WHAT??? What a waste of two hours.So the BIG secret was that the wife had been recruited at some point in her youth by the CIA???? and for THAT they killed two people???what a f*^%ing joke. These British politicians people were middle-aged,we're talking they were students ,when CIA supposedly approached the wife, like the mid seventies.Which means in the middle of the Cold War,when all either the US or Britain could think about were the Soviets.There were no secrets, what was the wife's crime supposed to be? I think this story is so ridiculous ,its beyond comprehension.Supposedly the wife influenced the prime minister positively towards the US.Did she really have to?Maybe these days there are things these 2 countries disagree on,in those Cold war days Gr.Britain intelligence and US intelligence probably were on the phone all day. What the heck is this story about?There was the Profiumo affair where the mistress was giving out info to the Soviets.I think some people got confused,were talking about the US not the Soviet Union. I think Polanski is so preoccupied about the Us legal system chasing him that he confused the USA with the Soviets.Or maybe his French friends dislike the Americans so much that he got confused about the fact that Britain and the US were on the same side.

The amount of stupidity in this film ruins it completely. It can't even be bothered to maintain its own internal logic. 1. The first ghost disappears off a ferry then washes up on a beach. But the second ghost is told that the body couldn't have wound up there and that there were flashlights on the beach that night. So, did they toss him off a ferry to drown, or drown him and then put him on the beach? Why do the killers care where it washes up? 2. The second ghost may have been naive and stupid to go to the CIA handler, but the first one already knew (it was in the manuscript) so why go there? It was more like suicide than murder. 3. So the wife was a CIA agent. Unless the former PM was brainwashed like in the Manchurian Candidate, what did that do for anyone? 4. The sheer stupidity of the second ghost to let them know he knows, before telling the guy who could do something about it. Also, when you are running from the bad guys, walk on the sidewalk. 5. And the secret message? Reminded me of an episode of the Simpsons where they go to a thriller and Homer yells out "Now I remember. The code is the nursery rhyme he sang to his daughter!" 6. It's not proof. The photos aren't proof. Nothing is proof. 7. In all the time since the first ghost's murder, killed because he "knew too much", no one searched the room for evidence? And what did all the evidence prove? Nothing. Stupid, stupid movie.