Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Ghost Writer (2010)

What is a ghost writer? From Wikipedia: "A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person." In the movie it's often shortened as "a ghost". Ewan McGregor plays the ghost. He is hired to reduct Adam Lang's memoirs. Adam Lang (played by Pierce Brosnan) is the former UK Prime Minister. The former ghost, Mike, has been dead by drowning.

The Ghost is to stay for a month with Adam Lang, who now lives in an isolated island in the USA. After a couple of days, Adam Lang gets involved in a big scandal and will be in investigation concerning war crimes. Then The Ghost finds some clues about Mike's death, which is probably not by accident.

The movie is well made, and that is not surprising, as the director, Roman Polanski is one of the best. I think the story itself is not too interesting. War crimes, CIA, politics... those are not interesting for me. I'm still not sure why the 2 ghostwriters should be killed. Is finding out the identity of a CIA agent a great threat to national security? On the other hand, The Ghost finds that Paul Emmett worked for the CIA (the year was also mentioned) by Googling the information. I also don't understand the reason why Adam Lang encrypted the secret into his memoirs - did he want to harm his wife and national security?

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