FILM SPOT - The Ghost (2010)

Interestingly timed, this one. In a time when Tony Blair has walked away from the Chilcott enquiry with a big fat grin on his smug perma-tanned face to become, irony of bitter ironies, the UN's peace envoy to the middle east, The Ghost asks a number of important questions. Such as, can a leading political figure get away with crimes against humanity? The answer appears to be that if he can, his sins will one day find him out. Pierce Brosnan plays not-Tony Blair-at all Adam Lang, a charismatic former prime-minister whose desperately bad memoirs are in need of a rewrite. Hence the need for Ewan McGregor's ghost writer, who takes on the job with a nasty feeling something will go wrong because nothing good ever came of digging in someone's background. Naturally he bites off more than he can chew when he discovers his predecessor who worked on the book met a rather premature end. This little precede may appear to be nothing particularly special on paper but Robert Harris has a way of taking well-trodden paths and injecting a bit of life into them. It also helps that the book the film is based on was essentially Robert Harris exorcising his demons from the early days of Tony Blair, with whom he had a close friendship until the whole Iraq war thing happened and he lost a fair amount of faith in the labour government. This gives the film a bite that would be lacking in any other pulp thriller. It is also directed by Roman Polanski, who may well have directed his last film due to the very real possibility he might be staring at a cell wall for the last years of his life.




Having said that, it would be no embarrassment to have this film as his swansong. It's damned good stuff, where everyone is not who they appear to be and everybody has secrets. The majority of the action takes place at Adam Lang's holiday home in what appears to be New England, and boy, what a depressing place it is too. All of the characters are drenched, cold and angry for pretty much the entire film's running length; no bad thing really, since the film wouldn't exactly be a creepy political thriller if they were in Balamory. No, the autumnal greys and driving rain of the setting give life to the cast, who do an excellent job. It's hard to say Ewan McGregor's performance is 'stellar' exactly, I mean it is very good, but he essentially plays a slightly bland writer with no real background, so it's not as if he has much scope to broaden his horizons. Still, he is sympathetic and you stick with him for the whole film because he does appear to have more than just a few grains of common sense. Pierce Brosnan is obviously enjoying himself immensely playing former Prime Minister Ton-sorry, I mean Adam Lang. His performance is deliciously oozing, smarm drips off of him the whole time and so when he does show glimpses of steel under all that charm, it is all the more surprising. It's a great performance. As is the performance of Olivia Williams, playing Adam's wife Ruth. A good character this one, since she sometimes seems so vulnerable that you feel for her as the bitter and dejected wife of a war criminal, while at others it is pretty clear that she could quite easily drop Adam so far in it he'd never get out again. Perhaps the only slightly weak link in the chain is Kim Cattrall. There's nothing wrong with her acting per se, but her slightly wobbly accent does make you wonder where it is she actually comes from.

Pictured: A wobbly accent.

There are also some odd pacing issues, and one or two missed opportunities. A scene for example in which Ewan McGregor's character discovers his room has been broken into is startlingly devoid of tension, and there some other scenes that do suffer from this problem scattered throughout the film – where there is a promise and little delivery. Having said that, these are minor quibbles in the big picture since the film, while being languorous in its pacing, keeps you utterly engrossed. The story twists and turns, there are revelations aplenty and every conversation feels like a loaded gun. Roman Polanski skilfully pulls The Ghost off, and given that the subject material occasionally waffled with the most extraordinary abandon, the film is tight, serious minded and is never ever dull. I do have issue with the bookend to the final scene, which if you've seen it strikes me as so 'who cares?' it's like they just ran out of footage to edit. Still, a great film. It's also compulsory viewing for anybody who feels that Tony Blair escaped divine justice; it'll feel rather...apt.