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The Ghost Writer
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The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer

A political thriller from filmmaking master Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby), based on the novel by Robert Harris (Enigma). When a successful British ghost writer, 'The Ghost' (Ewan McGregor), agrees to complete the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his agent assures him it's the opportunity of a lifetime. But the project seems doomed from the start – not least because his predecessor on the project, Lang's long-term aide, died in an unfortunate accident. More

The Ghost flies out to work on the project, in the middle of winter, to an oceanfront house on an island off the US Eastern seaboard. But the day after he arrives, trouble begins...

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2010Rating: M, Contains violence and offensive language128 minsFrance, Germany, UK
MysteryThriller
Director:
Roman Polanski ('Repulsion', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Chinatown', 'The Pianist')
Writer:
Roman Polanski
Cast:
Ewan McGregorPierce BrosnanKim CattrallOlivia WilliamsTimothy HuttonTom WilkinsonJames Belushi

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The Ghost Writer | Reviews

84%210 reviews

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Variety

Variety

The best thing that can be said about Roman Polanski's pic version of Robert Harris' bestseller "The Ghost" is that auds won't need to read the original novel. With a few exceptions, and necessary tightening, it's pretty much all up on the screen -- page by page of plot, line by line of dialogue -- in one of the most literal adaptations (by the British journo-turned-novelist himself) since the Harry Potter series. Low on sustained tension, and with a weak central perf by Ewan McGregor in the titular role, "The Ghost Writer" looks set for moderate biz at best in Europe, with much briefer haunting of North American salles.

Full review
Total Film

Total Film

There’s been an acid tinge to some US reviews of Roman Polanski’s 18th film, raising the spectre of the director’s current misfortunes – as if they have any legitimate critical bearing on The Ghost.

Full review
The New York Times

The New York Times

The darkly brooding sky that hangs over much of “The Ghost Writer,” the latest from Roman Polanski, suggests that all is grim and gray and perhaps even for naught. But this high-grade pulp entertainment is too delectably amusing and self-amused, and far too aware of its own outrageous conceits to sustain such a dolorous verdict. The world has gone mad of course — this is a Polanski film — so all we can do is puzzle through the madness, dodging the traps with our ironic detachment and tongue lightly in cheek.

Full review
The Guardian

The Guardian

Roman Polanski's deft take on Robert Harris's political thriller is the director's most purely enjoyable film for years

Full review
Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

In Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," a man without a past rattles around in the life of a man with too much of one. He begins by reading the work of an earlier ghost who mysteriously drowned, and finds it boring and conventional. Hired to pep up the manuscript to justify a $10 million advance, he discovers material to make it exciting, all right, and possibly deadly.

Full review
New Zealand Herald

New Zealand Herald

Let's cut to the chase: the ex-PM Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) depicted here is Tony Blair and "Hatherton" is defence contractor Halliburton.

Full review
Hollywood Reporter

Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN -- Roman Polanski is a filmmaker who could envelop an old lady's stroll along a boulevard with a sense of anxiety and dread, so it's a little odd that he hasn't made more thrillers in his career. "The Ghost Writer," an out-and-out thriller with international politics and war crimes as its background, gives him a springboard to take a deep dive into all the moody atmosphere, breathtaking betrayals, words loaded in double meanings and heart-stopping threats that make the genre so cinematic.

Full review
Empire Magazine

Empire Magazine

Alexandre Desplat deftly draws out the increasing uncertainty that anchors Roman Polanski’s tale (here retaining novelist Robert Harris’ original title) of a writer negotiating the dangerous memoirs of a Blair-like PM, resulting in an exquisitely suspenseful work.

Full review
Dominion Post

Dominion Post

If Polanski had volunteered to spend the year or two that this film took him to make in a Californian jail, that would have been time well spent. As it is, he has turned in one of the worst films of his career, and robbed me of a couple of hours when I could have been enjoying the afternoon sunshine. Boo

Full review
Christchurch Press

Christchurch Press

A gripping and gravitas-filled adult thriller.

Full review

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