No spoilers beyond what is also revealed in ads and trailers for the film.

The Ghost Writer is a stylish, Hitchcockesque thriller that leads the viewer on a wild goose chase through political intrigue, war crimes and both personal and national betrayals.  But perhaps befitting a movie where the protagonist is not just a writer, but one so lowly that he is neither named in the film nor on the books he produces, The Ghost Writer gives viewers neither a hero nor a moral question to fix on.  

In Roman Polanski’s masterful hands, the film is by turns amusing and suspenseful, never failing to hold our attention while refusing to stoop to the crude brutality of most contemporary thrillers.  In that way, it's a throwback to the days of The Master of Suspense, when finesse with story and character was essential to building drama and excitement in a film, rather than the cheats of quick cuts, throbbing music and vicious combat used by virtually every action director today.  In pacing, set design, music and countless small details, Polanski seems to be paying sly tribute to Hitchcock's style, creating a silky narrative in which everything unfolds at a pace that feels “just right" -- a welcome relief from relentless shaking cameras and lightning edits that leave the viewer agitated rather than moved. 

Populated by a collection of sterling British actors, including a smartly-cast Pierce Brosnan as a Tony Blair doppelganger and the always-reliable Tom Wilkinson as a mysterious professor (a seeming tip of the hat to Hitch’s collection of the same), The Ghost Writer amuses us even in-between the jokes which are sprinkled into the dialogue in just the right measure. (I was especially tickled by the non-verbals, such as the sand that the ghost writer's bicycle sinks into just as he's being sucked into the quicksand of the mystery, and the protestor’s sign reading “Liar’s Club,” which seemed a sly in-joke about memoirs.)  Add in some paint-by-numbers, crowd-pleasing political commentary on our most recent unpleasantness in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you have a thoroughly adult entertainment that’s well worth your $10. 

But unfortunately, where Hitchcock famously had a MacGuffin, Polanski has only a McGregor.

Asked to explain how he constructed his movies, Hitchcock seemed to take delight in explaining what he called “the MacGuffin,” which was the ostensible driver of the plot – an item that the characters are seeking, or a mystery that they need to solve.  What Hitch always made clear was that the MacGuffin was just a device to get the story in motion; his real interest was in what happened along the way, how the characters reacted to finding themselves in circumstances they had never expected to or prepared for.

Hitchcock’s protagonists were usually heightened versions of ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary situations and thus were forced to reexamine deeply held beliefs and habits and well as locate resources they hadn’t known they possessed. Unlike, say, a Jason Bourne who comes pre-programmed with the ability to speak any language, the knowledge of how to blow up a house using a toaster and a detailed map in his head of every city in the world, Hitchcock’s heroes had to resort to mundane and desperate measures like scissors and flashbulbs to save their lives and defeat the bad guys, surprising both themselves and the viewers with what they found they had in them. In the course of the film, each faced a personal moral reckoning that in some way changed them, which was what Hitchcock, like all great filmmakers, found fascinating and wished to explore.

A fine actor, Ewan McGregor, is hampered in the title role of The Ghost Writer because, to quote another writer, there simply is no there there.  At first, he seems to fit the role of ordinary soul in extraordinary circumstances:  A scruffy ghost writer drafted to whip a bad manuscript into shape in a mere 30 days – with the kicker being that the book is the autobiography of a disgraced British Prime Minister (Brosnan).  Swept off to a mysterious compound in New England, the writer predictably finds out There’s More to the Story Than First Appears and begins to poke around to find out the truth.

And here’s where The Ghost Writer loses the chance to be more than a diverting way to spend two hours on a Saturday night. At no point is McGregor’s character faced with any moral quandary of his own (well, there’s a small carnal question, but he dismisses it almost immediately and therefore so do we).  He’s not forced to examine himself, or even stretch himself, as far as we can tell.  Framed as little more than the research of a good writer, his efforts to uncover the truth are entered into almost haphazardly and without any sense of compulsion or even serious worry for his safety until close to the end of the film.  Since his predecessor has died under mysterious circumstances, we are meant to assume that he is under the same threat, yet that threat is toyed with but never quite felt – a perhaps deliberate underplaying to set up the final scenes of the movie, which to me fell flat in their improbable straining for a too-neat conclusion.

Somewhere in here is a compelling story beneath the MacGuffin of the topical political thriller:  A struggling and perhaps secretly angry writer who has never had the satisfaction of seeing his name on a single book he’s written, who spends his days making meaning from other people's lives to avoid finding meaning in his own, who has committed endless venial sins in presenting tidy versions of famous people’s lives while keeping his mouth shut for the money, but who now must decide what’s more important:  Truth that will affect entire nations or his own pathetic little life.  

But none of this is explored in The Ghost Writer.  Instead, its lead character remains true to his moniker, a cipher that we never get to know even slightly, much less identify with emotionally as viewers (a basic requirement for all protagonists).  What should play as a life-or-death crisis that keeps us literally on the edge of our seats instead leaves us neither shaken nor stirred, but only amused.

Realizing what's missing as we exit the theater, we may be tempted to do what all writers do:  Blame the editor for cutting out the best part of the story.

NOTE:  So as not to spoil the plot twists for those who have yet to see it, if you've already seen the movie, please take care with what you reveal in any Comments you make!  Thanks.