4. Adam Lang - The Ghost Writer (2010)
I've written quite a lot about Roman Polanski during the last few years, including
a piece on this very site about how one can appreciate his films in spite of his actions outside of them. While it may be a cliché to dredge this up, The Ghost Writer is bound up in the director's controversies, being completed while hewas under house arrest in Switzerland. The controversy didn't damage the film commercially, but it's still an underrated work in the Polanski canon. The Ghost Writer (sometimes just called The Ghost) is a political thriller based upon the novel by Robert Harris. It follows a nameless ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) who is commissioned to complete the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Brosnan), following the death of his previous biographer in an accident. As Lang fights off accusations of war crimes, the writer begins to uncover dark and murky dealings involving illegal links to the CIA... Polanski fans will recognise many of the tropes he employs in telling Harris' story: the architecture is deeply intimidating, political corruption is at the forefront, and the ending is deeply unsettling. What is less familiar is Brosnan's performance, which is more mercurial and intimidating than many of his other post-Bond roles. While Adam Lang as a character has strong echoes of Tony Blair, Brosnan never allows him to become a cipher, imbuing him with an icy quality that constantly unsettles us. It's a taut, thought-provoking and timely performance in a thriller which deserves more attention.
