For years (and years) Roman Polanski has made his living by creating spectacular thrillers that feature strong writing, great acting, and even better “stab you in the back” moments. He’s the director behind great films, such as Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), and The Pianist (2002). Now he’s brought the world another great thriller, The Ghost Writer, this time set in the political realm.
The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor (in his best performance ever, I think) as, simply, The Ghost who is hired to re-write the memoirs to Britain’s former Prime Minister Adam Lang (played very aptly by Pierce Brosnan) after the previous ghost writer commits suicide, or so we think. He’s getting paid a quarter of a million dollars for just four weeks of work, great money if you can get it. The Ghost quickly takes the job, in which he admittedly knows nothing about politics, and catches the first plane to Massachusetts where Lang now resides.
What unravels is something straight out of Polanski’s crazy mind where the unexpected happens and the good guys are often thrust into situations where your life could end at any moment. As The Ghost arrives at the Lang residence he becomes exiled to a room in the house where the memoir’s are kept and they can not leave that room for fear that they could destroy a nation (either Britain or the U.S.). Secrets, we all have them. The film then lets us in on a dirty little secret, Lang is about to become under investigation for various war crimes that were committed under his administration. While The Ghost tries his hardest to do the job he was hired to do, he finds himself distracted by Mrs. Lang (Olivia Williams, perfect) and then becomes sidetracked by an old photograph which points to an old Adam Lang associate (Tom Wilkinson) working with the CIA. It’s all downhill from here as events begin to go from bad to worse for The Ghost as he tries to stay alive amidst political secrets.
If you’re looking for a very smart political thriller with spot on acting, you shouldn’t miss The Ghost Writer, it’s Polanski’s best offering since he directed Adrian Brody to an Oscar win in The Pianist. Ewan McGregor could even find himself on the right side of an Academy Award nomination after this one. There aren’t enough smart movies out there, so skipping out on this one would be a crime in its own right.
I thought this film was good, too. Good review, keep them up!
Good review Mark, I agree with you about McGregor’s performance, I actually have him right now on my prediction list for best actor.
I think he could be best actor nomination material as well. I don’t believe he’ll win it (Leo has it in the bag for Inception), but he still deserves to be nominated for his performance.
There’s no way Leo will win it for Inception…too many other big name actors in that movie detracting from his performance. He will, however, win the Best Actor award for his role in Shutter Island.
God, no, he sucked in Shutter Island mainly because the movie was bad and because the writing was atrocious. The acting was therefore bad from those two radiating features, and he was Boston-accent in one half of the movie, regular accent the other half, as if no one would notice. Inception was his best performance, because he wasn’t being focused on as a super badass as they tried to in the last couple of movies. They just made him out to be a more normal, yet awesome person that has ability and is a strong-willed individual who wants peace. He was perfect in the movie because Nolan wrote his character perfectly.
I don’t know what movie you watched, but you did not describe Shutter Island. It wasn’t Scorcese’s best but it was damn good and DiCaprio’s best performance since The Departed…which if that role didn’t nab him an oscar, Inception doesn’t have a chance.
Great actors make bad writing better so I don’t see how you can say DiCaprio suffered from bad writing in Shutter Island but was the best actor in Inception because of good writing.
The writing was terrible in Shutter Island because it made Leo a certain way, meaning that he was effected by the writing so that he was unable to act to his potential, whereas in Inception he was able to act with such ability that I regained all of my respect for him. Leo’s best performance was in The Departed, but when Inception came out, I think that it was kind of a tie at that point. And yes, Shutter Island did suck in my opinion because I read the book and the movie essentially bitch-slapped it. But at least we can agree that Leo will be taking home the Oscar.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree at this point…it will be interesting to see if he gets nominated for both Shutter Island and Inception, I don’t think it’s ever happened before (getting nominated for two different roles in one category) but it will be fun to watch.
Absolutely. I hope he does, because in all honesty, he was good in both, I was just trying to down his acting Shutter Island to get my point across. Either way, I think he certainly deserves it.
I missed Ghost Writer, so now it is going in the queue. Good review.