The Ghost Writer

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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"

"A gripping and gravitas-filled adult thriller."