The Ghost Writer

Overall a well-acted, and tightly paced thriller that exhibits a nice wit and is almost ruined by an eye-rollingly bad end twist. This latest film from noted pedophile Roman Polanski (whose legal issues meant he had to shoot a film set in Massachussets in Europe) follows a prominent Ghost Writer (Ewan Macgregor), whose last book was the autobiography of a magician called 'I came I Sawed I Conquered,' who is hired to finish the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan). The previous writer had just died mysteriously, and the Prime Minister is about to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Macgregor soon realizes that there's more going on than meets the eye (isn't there always) as he becomes embroiled in international shenanigans.

What I enjoyed most about the film was that when Ewan's trying to be a spy and figure out what's going on he doesn't suddenly turn into James Bond. He makes mistakes, draws inaccurate conclusions and any revelations he makes feel like those that any reasonably intelligent individual could come up with. The fact that the film is able to maintain a generally believable (and even affable) tone for the majority of its running time makes the big denouement even more jarring. Oh its not as bad as say the ending of say Orphan but it does feel like the writers just ran out of time, and were like 'crap lets just do something cliche and arbitrary to wrap this thing up as quickly as possible.' Thankfully doesn't ruin the film completely, but I wish it had ended on a note at the level of the rest of the film.

Speaking of bad endings the finale of the upcoming Remember Me sounds like the most ill advised thing ever. Of course I may have to see it.