I've heard a lot about Roman Polanski. I've seen plenty of Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor to know what they're capable of. But watching The Ghost Writer, I was left wondering what we're supposed to make of their combined potential versus the outright lack of output. Sure, the shots of Nantucket in the winter are beautiful (even if Polanski couldn't be present to oversee them) but this movie challenges rounds of amateur golf, grass growing, and paint drying as the slowest activities known to humankind. Seriously, do you need to know more?

This one is deemed a "political thriller" and I must admit, if there was more of the last third of the movie involved, it might thrill. But where a movie like Breach makes you think that the jump out-and-surprise you moments are always available, this one leaves you wondering if thrill is even possible. I know I'm sandbagging this one, but it makes it pretty clear about why I'd a) never heard of this movie until it came up on the DVD list and b) why it was impossible to track down its publicity contacts.

The movie has some nice "moods" to it, highlighted by the areas where it's shot, the way it was shot, and the sideways characters who surround the Brosnan (ex-British Prime Minister Lang) and McGregor (ghostwriter who I don't believe is ever named) characters. Lang's wife (Olivia Williams) is haughty, dark, and controlling; Timothy Hutton and Jim Belushi's characters are equally manipulative as "controllers"; ninety-four year old Eli Wallach gets his five minutes of impact in, too.

But overall, it just doesn't do enough early on to make us care, even with its allusions and proposals that might make you think that this is Tony Blair we're looking at, not Brosnan playing Lang.

Still, I'm left considering the "ghost writer" aspect, the way that the boring stories, the lies, the dirty truth, are all spun by a master of word and phrase who is paid to make the "writer" look good. Here, the truth is certainly spun, even buried, but the ghost writer himself is unwilling to let things die, because he's hellbent on the truth. Somehow, we're clear early on that the truth will cost him, and that the price may be higher than his safe, law-abiding soul would want. But if there's any thrill here, it's of one man's quest to make things right, even when everyone else seems to be okay with ignoring the truth in front of them.