Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer” is a film flogged by nasty weather and an oppressive atmosphere of moral isolation and sinister suggestion. Its gray rains and nagging winter winds carry with them a relentless chill of delicious paranoia that is sure to excite fans of twisty cinema thrillers.

Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor "The Ghost Writer."

While not in the same league with his seminal thrillers “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” Polanski’s first film in four years delivers some pleasantly tingling surprises, a masterly McGuffin worthy of Hitchcock and enough stellar performances to score as a solid commercial enterprise.

Seen side-by-side with the recent, belabored “Shutter Island,” another bleak thriller of moral isolation by another master, Martin Scorsese, the advantage definitely goes to Polanski.

“The Ghost Writer” stars Ewan McGregor as a cocky scribe of best-selling biographies — referred to throughout only as “the ghost” — who is persuaded by his agent to take a big paycheck for polishing up the final draft of a bland memoir by former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, debonair as usual).

Dispatched to a soulless glass-and-teakwood compound on a wintry island off America’s northeast coast, the ghost is met by Lang’s icy blond assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall, sporting a crystalline British accent) and his tart, broody wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams, throwing off vague Lady Macbeth vibes), and is set to task.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is no simple writing job. First, the scrupulously guarded manuscript is dull and poorly written, and its author, Lang’s longtime political aide, has died under mysterious circumstances.

Second, Lang is a self-absorbed prig who is stingy with information and preoccupied by news that he’s about to be indicted by the World Court in the Hague for being party to war crimes in Iraq. (Any resemblance between Lang and real-life British Prime Minister Tony Blair is no mere coincidence since the story’s author, Robert Harris, was once a close Blair associate.)

As the ghost sets out to untangle Lang’s real story and find some semblance of truth, the narrative meanders off merrily into a maze of intrigue (break-ins, car chases, threatening bodyguards, stolen documents, hidden messages, turncoat political alliances, CIA skullduggery and the like).

And McGregor finds himself cast in the classic Hitchcock dilemma of an ordinary bloke in way over his head, caught up in a tangle of devious circumstances beyond his control or understanding. And, clearly, Polanski relishes this homage to Hitch by cranking up the ominous musical score of Alexandre Desplat, editing with nail-biting rhythms and maintaining an unsettling sense of dread.

He’s aided by a top-shelf cast that turns in crafty performances even in the briefest of roles. For instance, TV sitcom mainstay James Belushi is a hoot as a blustery American book publisher; Eli Wallach, at 94, is wonderfully crusty as a snoopy old beachcomber; and Tom Wilkinson is dangerously obtuse as a tweedy Harvard professor with a clandestine past.

With McGregor carrying the yeoman’s freight as the self-effacing, nameless protagonist, it’s left to Brosnan, Cattrall and Williams to provide vivid flourishes of character coloration to enliven the film’s relentless monotones. Each delivers delightfully, especially Williams, who lends Ruth various facets of calculation, aloofness, bitterness, seductiveness and vulnerability.

For his part, Polanski may have lost a step or two since his filmmaking peak, and certain moviegoers may be decidedly put off by his checkered personal life and long-running legal problems. But “The Ghost Writer” deftly adds another neat, noirish chapter to a film career marked by nimble storytelling, wrenching personal tragedy and dubious international playboy antics. As they say in the book business, it’s a good read.

— Dennis King

MOVIE REVIEW

“The Ghost Writer”

PG-13
2:08
3 stars

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall.

(Language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence, a drug reference)

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Will Fetters is living every aspiring young screenwriter’s dream.

His first script, completed while he was studying political science and prepping for law school at the University of Delaware, just finished a Cinderella journey to production and is set to open in theaters nationwide on Friday.

Robert Pattinson

It’s titled “Remember Me,” and is directed by Allen Coulter (“Hollywoodland”) with a heavyweight cast that includes Pierce Brosnan, Lena Olin, Chris Cooper and the currently hot Robert Pattinson (of “Twilight”). It was Pattinson’s participation in the film as star and executive producer that finally secured financing and gave the movie an invaluable publicity boost, the screenwriter said.

But it wasn’t Pattinson that Fetters had in mind as he was writing the script.

“When you’re a 22 year old and you don’t know anyone and you’re writing your first script, you have ideals in your head,” he said during a recent press junket. “When I was teaching myself to write, I read `American Beauty’ and Chris Cooper was actually the guy that I had in my head for the cop’s role when I was writing in my apartment in Delaware.

“And when I heard that he was going to do it – that was actually one of the last roles that we cast – that was pretty cool,” he said. “His performance in `American Beauty’ stayed with me, and to see him cast in my first movie, that was very, very cool.”

Fetters said he never dreamed that his first screenplay, loosely based on an incident in his own life, would attract the kind of heavyweight talent that it did.

“I always thought that if I were lucky this would be a small independent film that would go to Sundance without a distributor,” he said. “But to have this actor (Pattinson) at this moment come on board …. It’s wonderful, but who would have thought?

“My life has changed completely,” Fetters said. “When you’re a young writer, you cross this invisible threshold when you get your first movie made. And the fact that Rob’s involved certainly upped the profile. I got my first `job’ offer right after Rob started to circle this project, just by the mere mention of him and his potentially being in this movie.

“It’s like high school sometimes in Hollywood where once someone says this guy’s alL right, then it’s OK to date me,” he said. “So other studios started to send me books to look at. And now I’m in this really uncomfortable position where I have to actually choose what work I do as opposed to just doing whatever I’m offered. So I have to have some culpability for my own career.”

Recently, Fetters has adapted the Nicholas Sparks novel, “The Lucky One,” and drafted a remake of “A Star is Born” for Warner Bros. He just signed a deal to develop a TV pilot with “Gossip Girl” co-creator Stephanie Savage and is working on adapting Norman Ollestad’s survival memoir “Crazy for the Storm” for the screen.

In the meantime, he said he’s trying to just savor the hoopla surrounding the release of “Remember Me.”

“That first movie poster,” he says with a certain awe in his voice, “it’s always a big deal for a young writer.”