The Ghost Writer
Cinema Nova, 14/08/2010
Status: Behind by 8 films
EWAN McGREGOR gets to use a British accent (if not his own) for the first time in ages in The Ghost Writer. And thank goodness for that - his American accent doesn’t get any better the more he uses it. Here he plays an un-named English ghost writer who flies to America to put the finishing touches on the autobiography of Adam Lang, the former PM (PIERCE BROSNAN) now on the lecture and promotion circuit, when the previous ghost writer dies in grisly and increasingly suspicious circumstances.
I just read on Wikipedia that Nicholas Cage was originally to play McGregor’s role. I can’t imagine that would have been good for the film. It’s bad enough that they had American KIM CATTRAL (Sex and the City) playing a plum-in-mouth Pom and Brit TOM WILKINSON (44 Inch Chest, The Full Monty) playing an American. Throw Nic into the mix and you wouldn’t have been able to get to the story through all those massacred accents.
The story is fairly conventional - political crime thriller with plenty of juicy twists and surprises - but the treatment is a cut above the ordinary. I like the moodiness and palette that director ROMAN POLANSKI used, and I take all the little details and fragments of humor that make their way into the script to mean that’s it probably a very good adaptation of the source material.
The performances are very good in general (including OLIVIA WILLIAMS (TV’s Dollhouse) as Mrs Lang and JAMES BELUSHI, of all people, in a small but important role) and McGregor in particular does very well - it’s amazing what he can do when he doesn’t have to concentrate on keeping his accent from slipping.
