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A review: The Ghost
THE GHOST (15) 2 hrs 8 minutes Stars: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson Director: Roman Polanski
On general release. Opens at the Belper Ritz on May 7
Firstly, this Ghost is not the remake of that picture where Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze made pottery erotic.
In fact, the American title of this Roman Polanski film is The Ghost Writer, reportedly to not give the impression to Stateside audiences that Polanski had returned to the supernatural.
What Polanski has returned to is the cloak and dagger of his 1988 thriller Frantic. Ghost is timely, too.
It's about a displaced Prime Minister, though this one is clearly Blair not Brown.
The ex-PM is Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), in voluntary exile in an inhospitable Eastern seaboard island, where ghost writer Ewan McGregor (cleverly never named in the movie) is summoned, having got the job of polishing Lang's clunky memoirs following the puzzling death of his previous ghost.
The film is based on the novel by Tony Blair's former friend and confidant Robert Harris who is on record as becoming disillusioned with Blair after the PM allegedly helped President Bush with a spot of extraordinary rendition.
The clarity of Polanski's keenness to film the novel can be detected in the lashing wind and steely grey skies outside of Lang's cheerless bunker of a refuge: the director is now many years into his own enforced exile and is currently under house arrest in Switzerland.
Fortunately, Polanski finished the film before his incarceration. As one journalist commented: "the film was in the can and so was he."
What has come out of that can is a refreshingly old-fashioned conspiracy thriller with moments of Hitchcockian tension to the extent whereby composer Alexandre Desplat has clearly been encouraged to take his cue from Hitchcock's trusty scorer Bernard Herrmann.
Polanski's film is measured and assured, gratifyingly free of the jump-cuts of so many contemporary thrillers, with pleasing emphasis on performance.
Pierce Brosnan continues to shrug off his 007 persona, mixing oily charm with the ruthless touch of his hitman in Matador.
Ewan McGregor convinces as a likeable hack who slowly swims out of his depth, Tom Wilkinson has a telling cameo as an American professor who clearly knows something he's not letting on, and Kim Cattrall is quietly effective as Lang's aide-cum-ice maiden.
However, the big hit is Olivia Williams, who first came to mass attention as Bruce Willis' wife in Sixth Sense.
As Lang's fiercely intelligent wife, she is a formidable presence packing bitterness and scorn – a Blair Witch, indeed.
As these characters coalesce and the plot unfolds, Polanski ratchets up the intrigue and deception and, while he hasn't made a classic of the genre, The Ghost is still a satisfyingly watchable and, eventually, compelling thriller.
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Weather for Belper
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
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