'The Ghost Writer' keeps you right where it wants you

Roman Polanski's terrific new thriller, The Ghost Writer, deftly reminds us what has long made the director so effective, in movies like Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974): his singular knack for taking pulp and transforming it into tense, paranoid drama.

Based on a 2007 Robert Harris novel, the story follows a writer known only as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor) who is hired to rewrite the political memoirs of the former British prime minister (a nicely shifty Pierce Brosnan). The previous ghostwriter committed suicide -- or so it was said -- on a Cape Cod ferry boat.

A more cautious man might walk away from the scenario, which sounds much too good to be true -- a quarter-million dollars for just four weeks of work. But we're deep in Polanski territory, a world where good people are inexorably drawn into nightmarish circumstances. The Ghost quickly hops a plane to Massachusetts, where the prime minister is holed up.

The Ghost Writer was filmed before the director's most recent legal troubles (though editing was reportedly completed at the Swiss chalet where he is under house arrest). Like many of Polanski's pictures, most notoriously his baroque and bloody Macbeth (1971), his first film after the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by followers of Charles Manson, this new effort invites an autobiographical scrutiny that may or may not have intended.

The Ghost arrives at the sterile, modernist mansion and finds himself locked in a room with the manuscript -- which discloses material so explosive that it is kept in a safe. The film turns into a fascinating meditation on the notion of exile.

The prime minister, it turns out, is about to come under investigation by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for possible war crimes: It's alleged that he arranged for the kidnapping of four British citizens and then allowed them to be waterboarded by the CIA. If he returns to England, he might be arrested. The Ghost is supposed to be pinning him down for extensive interviews. But he finds his attentions diverted, first by the politician's steely wife (Olivia Williams) and then by his discovery of an old photo of a well-known university professor (Jim Broadbent), who is said to have connections to the CIA.

Part of the treat of The Ghost Writer, which also features a terrific Kim Cattrall as the prime minister's protective secretary, is that it's not entirely clear with whom Polanski identifies: The paranoid writer/artist who feels the walls are closing in on him; or the smooth operator politician who fears that he might never be able to return home.

Then again, maybe the joke is on the audience, and all this pseudo-autobiography is just a means by which Polanski can slyly misdirect us from the real matters at hand. As the clues stack up, it's clear that some sort of grave international crime has been committed, but Polanski and Harris (who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation) always manage to stay one teasing step ahead of the audience.

The Ghost Writer doesn't quite have the emotional punch of Polanski's most paranoid classics -- perhaps because the character of The Ghost remains a little too vague. McGregor is solid as a figure whose eyes are steadily opened to evildoing, but the screenplay never allows us to fully understand what's going on inside his head.

That said, the movie burns with so much style and sophisticated technique that you'll be more than willing to forgive this shortcoming. Photographed by Pawel Edelman (who was nominated for an Oscar for Polanski's The Pianist), the first half of the movie is shot in overcast grays and sterile whites. But the proceedings turn literally darker -- some of the climactic exchanges are in near blackness, a la Gordon Willis' famously murky cinematography in The Godfather.

And after taking such a somber turn with The Pianist (2002), it's wonderful to see Polanski display some of the brazen, merciless wit of his early thrillers, such as Knife in the Water (1962) and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). The Ghost Writer ends with one of the most wicked shots in recent memory, a brutal final twist that alters our understanding of everything that has happened until then. You may not be able to stomach the man's past misdeeds and his present legal troubles, but this movie confirms the plain fact that Polanksi is one of the greatest filmmakers alive.

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Christopher Kelly is the Star-Telegram's film critic, 817-390-7032