The Ghost Writer, okay, but not what I wanted

The Ghost Writer

Director – Roman Polanski

Starring – Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan with Tom Wilkinson

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference.

The Ghost Writer plays like an Alfred Hitchcock style thriller from the 60’s but with much more interesting cinematography. Polanski knows how to direct a thriller without using bad teenage gimmicks like mutilated bodies or other horror shocks. Instead this is a thriller built piece by piece. Actions and dialogue stack on top of each other to the point that, along with a musical score that captures the heightened tension and strained emotions, as an audience we realize our hearts are pounding and our palms are sweaty. This is a tense political thriller/drama.



That being said The Ghost Writer is not an action film and has almost no violence. Anyone expecting gunshots and fistfights should go see something else. The Ghost Writer is a film about dialogue and names. If you can’t remember names I suggest the subtitles function because what is being said is vital to the plot.

I was kind of hoping for a blend of masterful thriller and wicked action, and I was a little disappointed by The Ghost Writer because of the lack of action. I was kind of hoping for something like The International which is a superb thriller, like The Ghost Writer, but also managed to have one of the best gun fights I have ever seen. But I can’t complain too much, this was an exciting film, although from the hype critics are giving it I was expecting a much more intriguing plot.

I really liked how the mystery was set up though. Ewan McGregor plays a ghost writer, a man who writes other’s memoirs. He is working on Adam Lang’s, the former prime minister of England. In the process he is led to the possibility that there are many more secrets to Lang’s administration than we suppose at the start. This is slowly discovered as the ghost writer talks to Lang and his wife, finding little inconstancies. The story looks pretty straightforward and then, as the music crescendos, everything falls apart.



I did not love The Ghost Writer. I wasn’t very impressed by the acting. With names like Pierce Brosnan and Tom Wilkinson supporting Ewan McGregor I was expecting something a little higher caliber, like Micheal Clayton or something, but you have to account for the fact that Brosnan and Wilkinson each had only 10 minutes of screen time. McGregor was just not that interesting to watch in this film. His performance, which the film hinged on, was a little wish washy, and he seemed not to have much direction for his character. For a 40 year old writer there was little development to his character.



All in all The Ghost Writer was a little bit of a letdown. I was expecting an Oscar worthy movie, and while I was still happy to see a visually appealing film, that was also a good thriller, I wasn’t impressed by everything that happened. I wanted more dynamic acting and a little more action or drama or something to pick up the pace a little. This is a decent film, 7.9 out of 10, but it is not as high caliber a film as I was expecting.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – We see a fully nude man from the side, his groin is hidden by his leg and hip, he crawls into a bed with a naked married woman who slides on top of him and begins kissing him. They wake up the next morning in bed together and discuss the affair. There are a few references to a man’s affair with a woman, and we see a man from the chest up in a bathtub.

Violence/Gore – 4 out of 10 – A man is shot and we see a little blood on his head. A man is punched in the stomach and face. We hear the impact of a man being hit by a speeding car, but we don’t see anything. A newscast shows a terrorist being tortured by water being dumped on his face. A body is seen washed up on a shoreline.

Profanity – I heard one F-word, there might have been one more, and there were about 40 or so other profanities and religious exclamations.