The movie is based on the novel by Robert Harris, which he has adapted in collaboration with Polanski. It concerns Ewan McGregor, a successful ghost writer for a series of celebrities, who is hired for a large sum to fix up the troublesome first draft of the memoirs of a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). McGregor, whose character is not given a name, is wary—the first ghost writer, Lang’s longtime assistant, recently committed suicide under mysterious circumstances—but his agent persists, boasting to Lang’s attorney (Timothy Hutton), “You name it, he ghosts.” The Ghost passes muster, and is put on a plane and ferried to gloomy, rainy Martha’s Vineyard and Lang’s ultramodern/icy fortress getaway. Lang (a stand-in for Tony Blair) is ensconced in the sleek home along with his comely, efficient secretary Amelia (Kim Cattrall, in a nice variation on her Sex and the City character) ; sullen, snappish wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) ; and a phalanx of scowling security guards.
Lang and the ghost barely get started on the revisions before the house is in an uproar as Lang is embroiled in an erupting political scandal in which he’s accused of approving torture and other political crimes while under the thumb of the United States. The Ghost is caught up in the swirl of events and a temporary siege on the property by the media and protesters. Soon, he begins to suspect that his predecessor stumbled upon political and personal secrets in Lang’s past and that perhaps the precious first draft of the memoirs contains unwitting clues.
As McGregor falls deeper down the rabbit hole and the stakes are raised, the movie takes on the feel of one of those David Baldacci political potboilers in which the reader is given an entertaining but phony-baloney peek behind the scenes of corrupt political power and dirty money intersecting—and a lot of creepy, murderous characters who will do anything to hang on to it. Tom Wilkinson, Eli Wallach, Jim Belushi, Richard Pugh and other crack character actors are dropped into the mix as McGregor races to figure out what is going on.
Although he’s supposed to be a speedy, insightful ghost writer (even though we don’t actually see him do much work on the manuscript), McGregor’s character isn’t apparently the brightest in a lot of other areas and the audience is consistently ahead of him. Still, like the movie itself, McGregor is never less than entertaining and Polanski, working with cinematographer Pawel Edelman, gives this thriller a lot of visual oomph to carry one along. Those items, and a Bernard Herrmannesque score by Alexandre Desplat, help one overlook the gaps in what is essentially a silly, high-falutin’ thriller—albeit a diverting one. The Ghost Writer lives up to its namesake. It’s the kind of enjoyable, junky melodramatic mystery/roman à clef that any script doctor would be proud—after a round of drinks or two, perhaps—to admit having written.
If the Cockettes, the psychedelic drag-queen troupe from the late 1960s, had had grandchildren they might look, talk and act as outlandishly as the 12 troupe members of Sissyboy do in their eponymous documentary. This gender-bending shock-drag troupe that hails from Portland, Ore., worked together for about three and a half years, practicing their blend of political glam guerilla theatre. At one point they met nascent filmmaker Katie Turinski, who saw a hot subject in the group and started documenting their performances and off camera observations. The group eventually did a West Coast tour of three cities, traveling aboard the RV of the parents of one of the members, returning to their home base for a final show. Turinski captured all of this in her lively documentary of the group.
The film, which contains elements of several queer-themed movies—Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Shortbus and, especially, the documentaries The Cockettes and Trannyshack (where the group performed and cite as an inspiration) is never less than illuminating and entertaining. The performers—gay men all—like the 6’4″ bald Splendora (a latter-day Dean Johnson), Zebra, Kaj-Anne, et al, seemingly grabbed from every aspect of culture in creating their looks and their shows. Everything from Bette Davis to the war in Iraq is referenced and offered up for simultaneous adulation and derision. Like many groups of feisty gay men, the insights are often fast and funny. The film is lighter on the performances—and from the look of things, Turinski’s decision to limit that footage is to the good as the group’s antics are often more entertaining offstage than on.
“Our culture needs to be reminded that we’re not all here to fit the cookie-cutter mold” one of the performers comments as the final performance of the troupe nears and Sissyboy provides delightful evidence of that admonishment. The film is having its Chicago premiere Saturday, March 6, at St. Paul’s Cultural Center, 2215 W. North, as part of the Chicago Movies & Music Festival (CIMM), and members of Sissyboy are reuniting for a performance at Berlin, 954 W. Belmont, Friday, March 5. The fascinating transgender documentary Riot Acts (“Flaunting Gender Defiance in Music Performance”) and Universalove are two more LGBT-themed films screening during the March 4-7 CIMM fest. See www.cimmfest.org.
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com. Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site.