A snappy, engaging thriller, "The Ghost Writer" overcomes a somewhat bloated midsection with a fantastic payoff.
A writer (Ewan McGregor) is hired to take over ghostwriting the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). He's a bit nervous given he's never written political material before, his deadline is tight, and his subject is a bit aloof and hot-tempered. Oh, and there's the little fact that his predecessor's body washed up on a beach a few days before.
The writer bristles at the assignment, but takes it because it's lucrative. His enthusiasm wanes further when he finds tight security leaves him little access to the original manuscript.
Then Lang is investigated for committing war crimes for submitting terror suspects to the U.S. for what Dick Cheyney might call "harsh interrogation techniques" and what the media is calling waterboarding.
The film bursts with wonderful performances from actors like Eli Wallach, Tom Wilkinson and a shaved-bald Jim Belushi, who each appear in no more than a handful of scenes.
McGregor is solid if a touch nondescript as the nameless protagonist (he's never named in the film, and the credits list him only as "The Ghost"), Brosnan gives a stout performance, and give credit to Olivia Williams, who has for years given strong performances with little fanfare in films like "The Sixth Sense" and "Rushmore." Her portrayal of Lang's disenchanted idealogue wife who has lost her husband to the excesses of political celebrity is wonderful, and her wounded performance is one of the film's highlights.
Kim Cattrall ("Sex and the City") also appears as Lang's secretary, but it seems some days on set she forgot to pack her English accent. It comes and goes sometimes within a scene, and at one point she seems to drop it altogether only for it to appear later in the film in a different form.
The narrative meanders as the investigation into Lang's activity leads to protesters, which leads to McGregor's character doing his own investigating, which leads to an extended scene of McGregor doing little more than driving around. It takes more than half the film to establish who the good guys and bad guys are, and in the end we sort of find they're all the same people anyway.
But we finally get a worthwhile nugget of information, then another and another, leading up to a sparkling turn of events in the finale that comes out of left field, giving us the crackling twist "Shutter Island" thought it was offering.
Writer/director Roman Polanski infuses the script with a slick sense of humor which often distracts us long enough to inch the story along and keep us sated until he's ready for his reveals.
"The Ghost Writer" is a decided cure for the winter movie blues and is the first must-see film of 2010.