The Ghost

There have been two 'Hitchcockian' thrillers by veteran directors this year, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Roman Polanski's The Ghost. The first was an ornate, bloated, self-regarding and vacuous mess, featuring overwrought acting and pompous music; the latter is a supple, amusing, lightweight entertainment graced with likeable performances and an effective, unobtrusive score. So which of these two cleaves closest to the spirit of the Master of Suspense? Answer: consummate cinematic storyteller Polanski's first contemporary thriller since Frantic (1988), an adaptation of Robert Harris's 2007 novel scripted by the director and the author himself.

The Ghost in Polanski's anything but supernatural tale is in fact a ghost writer, a mercenary writer for hire whose sole function is to complete the 'ghosted' memoir left unfinished his predecessor, Mike McCara, whose body was found washed up on the beach after he fell overboard from a ferry. Summoned to a wintry, rain-swept Martha's Vineyard-like retreat, The Ghost (Ewan McGregor, with a dodgy Estuary English accent) is introduced to his subject, ex-British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his often tearful wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and Lang's comely personal assistant Amelia (Kim Cattrall, sporting a perfect cut-glass English accent).

The existing draft of Lang's dull, sanitised memoirs is kept under lock and key, but The Ghost later discovers some apparently incriminating papers and photos, hidden by McCara behind a picture frame. These suggest a link between Lang and Professor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), respected academic McCara suspects of having been a CIA recruiter, during the pair's days at Cambridge University. However, progress on the memoir is interrupted from outset, when Lang's former foreign secretary, Richard Rycart (Robert (Pugh), accuses the Tony Blair-like Lang of complicity in the illegal rendition of alleged terrorists by British agents working on behalf of the CIA.

Political commentators unable, or unwilling, to appreciate the film on its own aesthetic terms have preferred to ignore its masterly orchestration of slow-burning suspense and cumulative tension, preferring instead to see the film (and the book) as political journalist Harris's settling of scores with his old friend and colleague, Tony Blair. What this ignores is that, at the time that the novel was published, what now seems like insider knowledge or clairvoyance was merely fictional speculation. Far more interesting than this idle tittle-tattle is the evidence of a master film-maker operating at the peak of his powers, fashioning a seamless cinematic entertainment from Harris's pot-boiler of a novel without ever taking any of its potentially incendiary political themes too seriously.

While some may find Polanski's faithfulness to Harris's plot a tad pedestrian, there's no doubting the fluidity and clarity that the director brings to the unfolding of the mystery. Salient clues, red herrings and subtle hints are played for all they are worth, as the naive Ghost stumbles about in search of the truth hidden behind a polite façade of deception.

One immaculately staged sequence in particular perfectly captures the extent to which the Ghost is the passive subject, rather than the active driver, of his own fate. Having borrowed a car that is kept at the coastal hideaway for guests' use, The Ghost notices that the in-built satellite navigation system is still programmed for the last trip taken. Almost on a whim, he decides to see where the instructions will take him, a journey that includes a trip on the ferry from which McCara fell overboard to his death, and ends at the remote residence of Professor Paul Emmett.

Like Hitchcock, one of Polanski's strengths is his uncompromising direction of actors, whose job he sees as not to indulge their personal and creative vanities, but to serve his clear, pre-existing vision of the film. Coupled with a flawless eye for detail, Polanski's approach gets the best from everyone concerned, even Ewan McGregor, who struggles to flesh out in a cypher-like character, who is never even named. Others fair much better, in particular Olivia Williams, whose brilliant portrayal of the prime minister's betrayed wife secretes a diamond-hard intelligence beneath a veneer of superficial fragility. There is strength in depth here too, with memorable cameos from Tom Wilkinson, as the evasive Professor; a near-unrecognisable Jim Belushi, as a sharp-suited publisher; and the 93-year-old Eli Wallach, as an old man who questions the circumstances of the first Ghost's watery demise.