A literary hack (Ewan McGregor) — “You name it, he ghosts it” — lands the plum assignment of, for a cool quarter of a million, polishing up the memoirs of a Tony Blair-ish former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan), stepping into the shoes of the previous silent collaborator who has unaccountably left his car on the ferry and washed up on shore: accident? suicide? And is it only a coincidence that the ex-P.M. is just now coming under fire for alleged human-rights violations in the War on Terror? The adaptation of a Robert Harris political potboiler really doesn’t amount to much: standard portions of knee-jerk paranoia and mechanical plotting, to say nothing of the so-what final revelation that feels as concocted as it feels anticlimactic. But director Roman Polanski proves himself a masterful judge of the material, pacing himself prudently, walking a razor’s edge between anxiety and mirth, allowing the plot to unfold without rush, getting to know the cast of characters as palpable human beings — Olivia Williams a standout as the politician’s astringent wife — and keeping the bedrock of political piety pretty well buried. When at last he elects to turn up the heat — the brilliant device of following a preprogrammed computer route in the dead man’s car to a destination unknown, the prickly interview that awaits at that destination (“A less equable man than I,” rasps a pedantic Tom Wilkinson, “might begin to find your questions impertinent”), and the black sedan with tinted windows lurking outside afterwards — the effect is delectable. A sustained tingle. It may not hold all the way to the end, but it comes close. Kim Cattrall, Timothy Hutton, James Belushi, Eli Wallach. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd