The Ghost Writer

A purported "thriller" about Ewan McGregor who is tasked as the ghost writer on former British Prime Minister Pierce Brosnan's memoirs. He takes over the job for a man who was mysteriously killed. As he starts the job a controversy envelops Brosnan's character as he is accused of okaying the abduction of British citizens for CIA renditions. McGregor gets involved with Brosnan's wife and starts to wonder if is simple job is more complicated that it seems. The ultimate "conspiracy" is that Brosnan's wife is actually a CIA mole. It takes the movie about an hour and a half to suggest that maybe the British PM was a CIA mole, which is too long to get there. Until that point it's a lot of "mystery" but nothing we really understand. And when the reveal comes that the wife is the actual CIA connection I was left wondring, "So what?" Brosnan and Tom Wilkinson are both good, but not in major roles. McGregor seems like a cypher throughout. And there were simply no tense scenes. Information is repeated three, even four times. McGregor characters is never named and it's painfully obvious that they thought this was a clever idea. I will say that the final shot of the film was masterfully done. McGregor walks off screen with the manuscript in his hand and is run over by a car - offscreen. The pages of the manuscript float down the road as the bystanders react to the accident. Other than that it was a bleak, slow, dull movie.