Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2011

When the assistant and confidant of a former British prime minister turns up mysteriously drowned on a Martha’s Vineyard beach, a hack ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) is brought in to quickly spice up the deceased aide’s highly anticipated but hopelessly pedestrian biography of the politician. And spice it up he does, perhaps lethally so. At about the same time, it is announced that the PM (Pierce Brosnan), a thinly disguised Tony Blair, is being looked at by the World Court for crimes against humanity for assisting a thinly disguised George W. administration and the CIA to kidnap and torture people. Director Roman Polanski, who knows a thing or two about thrillers (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist) has made a smooth, gimmick-free, Hitchcockian thriller for grownups, slowly building suspense and a sense of dread as Ewan digs deeper and deeper, gradually learning what’s really going on in the man’s inner circle. Olivia Williams is spot-on as the PM’s knowing wife, and Kim Cattrall is the mistress. Based on and faithful to Robert Harris’s novel The Ghost, this is a well made, atmospheric and highly entertaining film of a kind we see too little of these days.