Directed by Roman Polanski. Starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. Rated PG. Opens Friday, March 5, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas and the Cinemark Tinseltown

A tone of postmillennial cynicism stiffens the narrative spine of this beautifully old-fashioned paranoid thriller from Roman Polanski. Forever staring at life’s invisible prison bars, the Polish-born auteur pulls out some of his Chinatown stops in The Ghost Writer while echoing the quietly spooky spy tales of Graham Greene.

Polanski’s screenplay credit is shared with novelist Robert Harris, who wrote the book upon which this is based, and it’s hard to know who penned what. That hardly matters in a tale about someone hired to dress up another man’s lies in less transparent clothing.

Ewan McGregor is perfect as a shabby Fleet Street veteran—never named—who is tasked to rewrite the memoirs of ex–prime minister Adam Lang. The latter is Pierce Brosnan, doing Tony Blair with less brains and enough testosterone to have shoved the U.K. into bed with a likewise departed U.S. president. Now Lang is accused of war crimes for his role in having British citizens tortured by the CIA.

In short, this is one squeamish spot for our tweedy hack, and things get worse when he lands at Lang’s high-security compound off the coast of New York (actually Germany). There, he’s caught in a silent tug of war between the testy PM’s wife (impressive Olivia Williams) and his sleek assistant (Kim Cattrall, with an iffy Brit accent). Worse, he learns that his predecessor on the almost finished autobiography may have been murdered.

That news comes from 94-year-old Eli Wallach, in one of many mordantly funny moments that relieve the tension in a colour-drained, widescreen film dominated by hard walls, cold seas, and oppressive grey skies. The ending is a little too neat, but this Ghost offers a lot of moviegoing pleasure to help wash down a rare meal of food for political thought.