Fun! Fun! Fun!
Scandalous sex! Murder! International intrigue! Hidden messages (albeit of kindergarten simplicity compared to The Da Vinci Code)! Car chases! Creepy old island guys with ominous warnings! Editing finished during Polanski’s house arrest in Switzerland! Shootings!
Yep, this movie has it all. And it also has Ewan McGregor. Who is always captivating, whether encompassing a heroin addict, love-struck poet, or in this case, dangerously single ghost writer hired to finish the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (played charismatically by Pierce Brosnan).
Why are the memoirs unfinished? Because the previous ghost writer died surrounded by mysterious circumstances of course!
While Brosnan and McGregor certainly deliver, it was Olivia Williams as Brosnan’s wife who stole the show, seamlessly playing both the unstable, vulnerable woman-scorned and calculating evildoer. Somehow you know she’s lying but also fully believe she’s telling the truth. What? Forget it. Get ready for a car chase! Wheeee!
I was not entirely convinced by Kim Cattrall’s English accent, but she plays a good sexy assistant to the former Prime Minister. Also great in supporting roles were Robert Pugh as Lang’s former foreign minister and Tom Wilkinson as Paul Emmett, a Harvard professor who seems to have both a hidden connection to Lang and some hand in the previous ghost writer’s death…I didn’t fully understand his involvement until the end, which may have been my own stupidity but that doesn’t matter. Here comes a shooting! And creepy henchmen on a ferry!
The movie almost makes a political statement at one point, as Lang is summoned by the Hague to be tried for his involvement in international war crimes including collaborating with the CIA to use torture to combat terrorism…but then there’s some liquor and a scandalous sex scene!
I was a bit disappointed in the ending. The final shot (you’ll know when you get there) was pretty damn cool, but the ending was a total throw away. Oh well. Who cares? There were car chases!
