Conspiracies, Yes, but Climax Misses

Roman Polanski’s thriller “The Ghost Writer� builds and builds and builds some more — and fails to deliver.

   Ewan McGregor plays “The Ghost,â€� hired to help a Tony Blair-like former prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) finish his tedious memoirs after the previous ghostwriter is found washed up on a Cape Cod beach.

   It doesn’t take long for the Ghost to figure that things aren’t quite right — Lang’s tales of his past don’t seem to add up, the first ghostwriter apparently had some direct contact with Lang’s most vocal political enemy, and what’s the deal with this weird Harvard professor?

   Plus the Ghost finds an island old-timer, played to rheumy perfection by Eli Wallach, who swears no body could fall off the ferry and wash up where it did.

   Lang is distracted from his memoirs when charges are brought, that he allowed terrorist suspects to be flown off for secret CIA torture, and for a little while the film threatens to veer off into a politically correct diatribe, featuring thinly disguised versions of the usual suspects — Bush, Cheney, Halliburton.

   But whatever point Polanski and screenwriter Robert Harris might be trying to make is obscured by the sheer weight of the story.

   There are conspiracies layered upon schemes and bolstered by subterfuges galore in “The Ghost Writer,â€� but apart from figuring out that somebody got recruited by the CIA at one point, the exact relevance of, well, all of it, remains murky at the end of this exceedingly long and ultimately unthrilling film.

   Olivia Williams is effective as Lang’s wife Ruth; Kim Cattrall is sultry as Lang’s chief of staff and mistress, and McGregor does a nice job as a decidedly unheroic hero.

   But this is Brosnan’s show.

   He shines as the smarmy Lang, alternately petulant and charming. He’s every bit as phony as a politician ought to be.

   Polanski milks the atmosphere for everything it’s worth; his characters spend a great deal of time in the dark — literally and figuratively.

But he also goes for the shoddiest effect in contemporary filmmaking — the shot of a computer screen.

   And even those not just willing but eager to suspend disbelief will be forced to snicker when The Ghost informs Lang’s arch rival of a crucial factoid, adding “It’s on the Internet!â€�

   Well, fellas, the assertion that both Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush are actually nine-foot tall, shape-shifting reptiles from another galaxy is also on the Internet — and would probably make a better flick.

   It’s too bad the film is so slow, and spends so much time setting the audience up for a climax that seems like an afterthought. In one sequence The Ghost is crossing out large chunks of Lang’s manuscript. Maybe he should have taken a whack at the screenplay.

   According to IMDB, Roman Polanski finished editing this movie from a Swiss prison after his arrest.“The Ghost Writerâ€� is rated PG-13 for language, sexuality, violence and a drug reference. It is at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY.