In Over His Head

In The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays, yes, a ghostwriter who is hired to craft the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), the former UK Prime Minister. (What? You thought folks like that wrote their own books?) McGregor's character (who is never actually given a name) is on the clock to deliver a manuscript to the publisher in a month. As if that's not already a challenge, Lang's former ghostwriter has just turned up dead, the Prime Minister (clearly modeled after Tony Blair) is being accused of war crimes, and his life story is awfully suspicious. Soon enough, writing the memoir is the least of the problems the ghostwriter has to deal with.

Directed by Roman Polanski, and featuring a cast that includes McGregor, Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall, Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson, and Eli Wallach, The Ghost Writer is a mostly engaging film. McGregor gives a great performance, the story is well told, and I was entertained throughout. That said, a few of the accents are not always convincing (Cattrall never convincingly passes for a Brit, for example, and that makes her a really weak link in the cast) and the film goes on a bit too long. I liked The Ghost Writer, but I'm only going to give it a B.