FAQ

A British ghostwriter known as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor) takes on the job of completing the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), following the death of Lang's previous ghostwriter and long-term aide. As he works on the book, the Ghost uncovers evidence that the Prime Minister may have been involved in war crimes.

The Ghost Writer is based on The Ghost, a 2007 novel by English writer Robert Harris. Harris also co-wrote the movie screenplay with director Roman Polanski. Harris based the characters of the Prime Minister and his wife very closely on his former friend Tony Blair and Blair's wife Cherie.

Most likely, he died. It is obvious that an assassination was planned against him. This is because the car that crashed into him is seen turning on its lights in the background as he leaves the building and speeding up as he walks onto the street. We then hear a large thump and people start to gather around. The papers he was carrying were blown down the street for anyone to find and, potentially, to uncover the truth about Ruth Lang. Judging by the speed of the car, it is highly unlikely that he would have survived, and even if he had, he had lost all of his evidence revealing the scandal. This assassination plot was also held against the previous ghost writer who was also assassinated. In the novel, after he revealed all the scandal in the memoir, the Ghost knew that it was only a matter of time until he'll get killed just like Mike McAra, but the book didn't explicitly say he was killed in the end.

In the UK (among others), the uncensored audio track is used for the film. It features the F-word multiple times and also the C-word is used once. For the PG-13 rating (for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference), the studio replaced most of those terms in a relatively ham-fisted manner by dubbing or muting. It doesn't sound like the actors themselves were involved in it and no attention was drawn to the lip movements either. In the end, the US get two instances of the F-word.