What Do The Critics Say?

"Part of the fun of The Ghost comes from the fact that Brosnan and Williams are playing thinly veiled versions of Tony and Cherie Blair. As such, both actors deliver terrific performances: Brosnan nails Blair's grinning public persona and charming mateyness, while Williams has a much more complex role as Ruth, whose seething anger masks surprising depths. McGregor is perfectly cast too." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "A slow-burning and elegant thriller firmly in the Hitchcock mode but with shards of cynicism that are uniquely Polanski's." Rob Gonsalves E!CRITIC "Sleek and sophisticated, evoking memories of Hitchcock." Susan Granger SSG SYNDICATE "Roman Polanski places the emphasis on mood, atmosphere and dialogue in this creepy political conspiracy thriller." Keith Cohen ENTERTAINMENT SPECTRUM "In every respect, this is an exemplar of the art of the thriller. Directors like Polanski are a dying breed. We need more of them." Nick Dent BRISBANE SUNDAY MAIL "Smart and atmospheric, with a delicious undercurrent of brutality, this is a political thriller executed with the panache of Hitchcock in his prime." Robert W. Butler KANSAS CITY STAR "Part detective story part political thriller, The Ghost Writer is built on recent world events in an imaginary scenario that is not so fanciful as to be incredible. The casting is superb: Ewan McGregor has never been better as 'The Ghost'. Timothy Hutton and James Belushi shine in key support roles." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE

"Hitchcock must have been watching from above and smiling when 'The Ghost Writer' was filmed. It's smart. It's sophisticated. It's a thinking person's mystery." LINDA COOK QUAD CITY TIMES "Polanski delivers his message about power and corruption in a subtle, engaging way, and delivers his message with a wry, humorous edge." Lori Hoffman ATLANTIC CITY WEEKLY "A supple, amusing, lightweight entertainment graced with likeable performances and an effective, unobtrusive score." Nigel Floyd FILM4 "Polanski’s most enjoyable film for a very long time." Sukhdev Sandhu DAILY TELEGRAPH "The brilliance of the ensemble acting here is perhaps Polanski's finest achievement." Janos Gereben ENTERTAINMENT INSIDERS "Polanski's master touch, his attention to framing, lighting, to every detail, and his wicked visual witticisms make it a joy for any film lover." Julie Rigg ABC NATIONAL RADIO AUST "The film clocks in at just over two hours, but it's so enticing in its cold, rain-swept way, the sponge absorbing it is you." Christopher Smith BANGOR DAILY NEWS

The Inside Story "The Ghost Writer" is a contemporary thriller by the best-selling British novelist and former political editor of The Observer, journalist Robert Harris. In early 2007 while working with Roman Polanski on an adaptation of his novel "Pompeii", Harris started to write his novel, "The Ghost". Harris was working on both projects in parallel and believes the novel was imbued with Polanski's influence as a result. When, for various reasons (including a looming actors strike), the planned film didn't go ahead, Harris sent Polanski a copy of his finished novel, prior to its publication. Polanski responded by saying "Let's do this instead, it's like Chandler." "He'd been looking to make a thriller and had been originally interested in my first novel "Fatherland" (2006), but he discovered it had already been filmed. So in a curious working out of fate, which he strongly believes in, we ended up making something completely different. We then spent another very pleasant few months working on this screenplay instead," Harris explained. Harris says he found Polanski the perfect collaborator. "He is respectful of the original source material and he always said 'the novel is the screenplay'. So from a writer's point of view he's the ideal director. Our method was to do a draft, which I would write based on the scenes and the structure of the book and then we would go over it remorselessly; discarding, sharpening, improving. One of the curious effects of working with him is to feel one is writing the novel again, but getting it right this time around. There are things in "The Ghost Writer" screenplay which are better than are in the novel. We worked at it and made it sharper. For example, I think that the movie’s infinitely strengthened by the fact it stays in this environment of trees and coastline and derelict rundown ports and beaches. That works much better." The page-turning novel that became the script was influenced by the 'master of the art of suspense', Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (August 13th 1899 – April 29th 1980). Harris revealed he is a big fan of the late, great, director. "I hugely admire the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock," says Harris. "The way an ordinary guy gets plunged into a completely strange world, yet every step of what happens is completely logical. Yet it becomes more and more crazy. I like that genre and Hitchcock was the master of it. And certainly I tried to put an element of that in "The Ghost Writer". This is an ordinary, nameless guy, who happens to do a job that takes him into a completely extraordinary world. And we go into that world with him. What appeals to me, and I think to Roman as well, about the thriller genre is that it has fantastic narrative energy and drive." Hitchcock, acclaimed by many as the greatest British filmmaker, directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades including the major works: "Notorious", "Dial M for Murder", "Rear Window", "Vertigo", "To Catch a Thief", "North by Northwest", "The Birds", "Torn Curtain", "Topaz" and perhaps his greatest of all, "Psycho". Despite the acclaim of his peers and audiences alike, Hitchcock never received an Oscar for directing, but his works were recognized by the Academy in 1968 with the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award (the same year he received the Directors Guild of America, Lifetime Achievement Award.) When "The Ghost" was published, many commentators interpreted the novel as a thinly-veiled commentary on his former friend and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Not so says Harris ("Enigma") who explained the idea came "fifteen years ago, long before Tony Blair was Prime Minster. I was just very interested in the set up of a former world leader and someone who has to write his memoirs for him." But Harris, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, would receive inspiration from a radio interview which spoke of Blair. "I envisioned from the start a kind of love interest between The Ghost and this ex-leader’s wife. I saw them living in some isolated spot, but I could never quite get it right. I could never quite see who this world leader was or where he lived. And year after year I’d look at this idea, then put it away. In the end more than a decade went by. And finally in 2006 I heard an interview on the radio with someone who wanted to have Tony Blair prosecuted for war crimes, who said that the only way he would be able to avoid this would be to go and live in America in exile because he couldn’t be extradited from there. And I almost froze in my seat because I suddenly thought how that could be the central character. Someone based on someone in that situation. And immediately then I also saw the location: in exile, in the United States; like Solzhenitsyn in the 70's. That’s really when it crystallized for me." Nobel Prize winner Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr (Literature 1970) was exiled from the Soviet Union, in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1991 when his Soviet citizenship was restored. 2003 BAFTA Film Award winning producer Robert Benmussa ("The Pianist"), who has worked with director Roman Polanski since 1992’s "Bitter Moon", says, "In all of Polanski’s films, there are many layers, and one of the leitmotifs of all of his films is the struggle to bring the truth that lies beneath to light, to show the reality behind appearances. Justice is something he holds dear. But never without irony." The film for the most part, is set in America, in an out of season seaside town on an island off the eastern seaboard of the United States. Harris, father of four (Holly, Charly, Mattilda and Sam) says the setting and climate were chosen for very specific reasons. "I always like to put weather in my books," says Harris. "I suppose that’s because I’m an Englishman and we’re famously obsessed with the weather." The truth at the centre of the film comes to light in way that recalls one of Polanski’s most chilling films, which like this and several of his other films ("Tess", "Bitter Moon", "The Ninth Gate", "The Pianist") was based on a novel. In "Rosemary’s Baby" (1968), the identity of the evil neighbour is revealed in an anagram in a book. Here, the big reveal involves a riddle planted in the manuscript, The Ghost will work on. While it appears fanciful, the concept has its origins in reality. "Two of my friends have both ghost written books. One suggested that I describe the process of ghost writing. They also said that it often occurred to them to encrypt something into the text in the way someone working on a great cathedral in the Middle Ages couldn’t resist carving their initial letters or a leaving message, hidden high up among the gargoyles. The idea of disguising a secret as a code within the text of a book intrigued me," says Harris. "The manuscript is absolutely essential throughout the book and the movie. Its importance grows and grows until it almost becomes a character in its own right." The narrator of "The Ghost Writer", played by Ewan McGregor, provided another great challenge for the writer and director: an unnamed writer who is at the center of the story and yet remains an elusive bystander to the main events; but one who nevertheless solves the riddle at the centre of the story. With the screenplay now fine-tuned, the film-makers turned their attention to choosing their cast. The biggest challenge was the character of the narrator, who's name is never revealed. "It was quite brave of Ewan to take on such a part," Harris ("Fatherland" 1992) noted. "He really did have to completely flesh it out himself." 1997 & 2004 BAFTA Scotland Award winner Ewan McGregror ("Trainspotting" & "Young Adam") was thrilled by the prospect of working with Polanski. "I expected that I would be challenged by Roman and I really wanted to be. He’s always giving actors really interesting notes on their performance, really, left of field comments that brings things to life, it’s wonderful. He puts in massive amounts of details in the performance and what you see and how you move and what the set looks like and what’s lying around. It’s the detail that makes it strikingly real I think. I’ve watched most of his films now in preparations for this and that's what I was struck by and I was excited by." When it came to casting Adam Lang, Polanski was keen to avoid any comparisons to any former British prime ministers. “Roman wanted the physical aspects of the characters to be different to those we might imagine," says Benmussa. Polanski knew who he wanted for the role: 2000 UK Empire Award winner Pierce Brosnan ("The World Is Not Enough"). The director had no other names in mind. Harris was thrilled with Polanski’s choice. "I vacillated between liking Adam Lang and thinking he was a complete and utter jerk to believing he had sincerity and did want the best for his country," Brosnan offered. "There is a lot of concealment within all these characters. It really is a nest of vipers in this rather bleak austere house. The writing is very good. I never saw myself as a British Prime Minister, ex or otherwise, but I'm having a great time playing it." The role of Amelia Bly was the second character to be cast. Again, Polanski only had one name in his head for this protective assistant to Adam Lang, whose loyalty to her boss goes beyond the call of duty: "Sex and the City" star, Kim Cattrall. "I would say that there are two wives in Adam Lang's life. There's Ruth and there's Amelia," the 2003 Golden Globe and 2004 Screen Actors Guild Award winner for "Sex and the City" says. "This is a woman who's made a career out of helping politicians and she is always one step ahead anticipating his needs. She's smart, she's capable and she's really indispensable." With three of the principal roles cast the role of Ruth Lang, the ex-Prime Minister’s wife, proved a tougher challenge. Several actresses who were the right age for the part, were considered before Polanski settled on 2003 British Independent Film Award winner Olivia Williams ("The Heart Of Me"). "I think Ruth is the most interesting character in the movie," says Harris. "She’s the most intelligent and she’s the person who really makes everything work. She’s also the funniest and the sharpest." "The role is an absolute pleasure, I have to lead an audience confidently down one path and deceive them," says Camden Town born Williams. "I had to do a similar thing in "The Sixth Sense". It's really the pleasure of acting." McGregor enjoyed watching the scenes between Williams and Cattrall unfold. "It's wonderful watching Olivia and Kim because the two characters are in love with the same man. And it’s very fascinating to see how they’re playing that. It’s beautifully done. It’s very nicely detailed, the cattiness between the two women, but it’s quite subtle." The supporting cast comprises some of the best character actors working today: Golden Globe winner Tom Wilkinson ("John Adams") as Paul Emmett, James Belushi as publisher John Maddox, 1957 BAFTA Film Award winner Eli Wallach ("Baby Doll") as the Old Man, 1981 Oscar ® winner Timothy Hutton ("Ordinary People") as Lang's lawyer Sidney Kroll, Jon Bernthal ("Night at the Museum 2") as the agent Nick Ricardelli and Robert Pugh as ex-Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart. What's It All About?

When a successful British ghost writer, known only as The Ghost, agrees to complete the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, his agent assures him it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. The project seems doomed from the start: the previous writer, Lang’s long-term aide, died in an unfortunate accident. The Ghost Writer flies out to work on the project, in the midst of winter, in an oceanfront house on an island off the US Eastern seaboard. But the day after he arrives, a former British cabinet minister accuses Lang of war crimes by authorizing the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists and handing them over for torture by the CIA. As the controversy erupts, it brings reporters and protesters swarming to the island and outside Lang's mansion. Trapped in a world in which nothing, and no one, is as it seems, The Ghost quickly discovers history may be decided by whoever stays alive to write it.

The Verdict "For those who are old enough to remember, "The Ghost Writer" will immediately evoke memories of both the hit TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (1955 - 1961) and a plethora of highly entertaining and critically acclaimed films from the man who became known as 'the master of suspense', Alfred Hitchcock. The controversial French-Polish Oscar winning filmmaker Roman Polanski helms this production and with recent events (regarding his arrest at the Zurich Film Festival, his subsequent detention in Switzerland and then release from custody) still ringing in everyone's ears, there's a huge buzz surrounding the release of his latest production. It's a story of intrigue, deception, murder and betrayal that will leave you guessing and on the the edge of your seat, right up to the very last moment. Adapted by 2010 Silver Berlin Bear winner Polanski ("The Ghost Writer") and author Robert Harris ("The Ghost"), the film features a first class cast and a storyline that hints at current events on the world political stage. Ewan McGregor absolutely stars as 'The Ghost'. Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams play Adam and Ruth Lang, characters who obviously hint at Tony and Cherie Blair. "Sex And The City" fans will get to see a side of Kim Cattrall cinemagoers haven't been privileged to for a while. Cattrall (who made her debut as Joyce Donnovan in the 1975 Otto Preminger film "Rosebud") gives a solid performance as Lang's assistant and mistress. "The Ghost Writer" should provide good value for those who appreciate a good thriller. Very recommended. 4 1/2 STARS." The Production Team

Director From Adaptation Screenplay Producers Original Music Cinematography Film Editor Casting Production Design Art Direction Set Decoration Costume Design

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Roman Polanski the novel "The Ghost" by Robert Harris Robert Harris & Roman Polanski Robert Harris & Roman Polanski Robert Benmussa/Roman Polanski/Alain Sarde Alexandre Desplat Pawel Edelman Hervé de Luze Fiona Weir Albrecht Konrad Cornelia Ott & Steve Summersgill Katharina Birkenfeld & Bernhard Henrich Dinah Collin

Who Is Playing Who?

Ewan McGregor Jon Bernthal Kim Cattrall Pierce Brosnan Tim Preece James Belushi Olivia Williams Timothy Hutton Anna Botting Tom Wilkinson Eli Wallach

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The Ghost Rick Ricardelli Amelia Bly Adam Lang Roy John Maddox Ruth Lang Sidney Kroll SKY TV Newsreader Paul Emmett Vineyard old man

Run Time 128 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2010 - Hoyts Distribution - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2010 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian and International Copyright. Trademark Laws and Intellectual Property Rights apply.