A ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) uncovers dark secrets when he is hired to finish the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer. (Summit Entertainment)

The opening scenes of Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, in which we see a ferry chugging across churning, black waters on a dark and stormy New England night, bring to mind Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, another recent mindbender directed by a revered '70s master.

Roman Polanski's latest is a crackling, lively movie that reminds us of the screw-turning thrillers he cranked out in his Chinatown heyday.

While Shutter Island is a nod to noirs and melodramas of the past, however, The Ghost Writer is rooted firmly in the present. This is a crackling, lively movie, and the only time Polanski looks back is to remind us of the screw-turning thrillers he cranked out in his Chinatown heyday. Brimming with tension, paranoia and black humour, The Ghost Writer is the best film Polanski has done in years.

Our guide through this murky intrigue is the unnamed central character (Ewan McGregor), listed only as "the Ghost" in the film's credits. A hack writer best known for penning a biography of a magician called I Came, I Sawed, I Conquered, the Ghost is offered a fat paycheque to beef up the snooze-inducing memoirs of a former British prime minister named Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, in a career-best performance).

From the start, the Ghost is in over his head. First, there's the matter of the book's previous ghost writer, who washed up dead on the Massachusetts shore after a late-night boat ride. Then there is his slippery subject, a politician who seems to be hiding many secrets behind his benign, charming grin. As the writer arrives at the Martha's Vineyard beach house where Lang and his brittle wife, Ruth (a top-notch Olivia Williams), now reside, trouble is brewing on CNN. Allegations are made linking Lang to the CIA, torture and war crimes, which could land him in the International Criminal Court.

Robert Harris, the British author who wrote the film's source novel, clearly intends for Lang to be a Tony Blair stand-in, but The Ghost Writer also contains sly nods to Polanski's own messy legal situation and lengthy exile in Europe. One of film's many pleasures comes in watching how the director, who hasn't set foot in America in decades, re-creates the film's U.S. locations from the inside of a German studio.

The set design is excellent throughout, and the Langs' chilly beach house-cum-fortress — all stiff leather couches and glass tabletops — contributes to a mounting atmosphere of dread. Squared away in his sterile office, peering out of giant windows at permanently charcoal skies, the Ghost keeps stumbling across things in the manuscript that don't add up. Joking that he's now a "tethered goat," the writer is convinced he's in for the same grim fate as his predecessor.

Former British prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, right) has much to hide from his ghost writer in Roman Polanski's new thriller. (Summit Entertainment)

He has good reason to be afraid. While conducting his research, it becomes obvious to the scribe that everyone around him — from Lang's politically savvy wife to his coolly efficient personal assistant (Kim Cattrall) — has some kind of hidden agenda. With Polanski and McGregor gradually establishing that there's no one the Ghost can trust, the stage is set for some serious suspense. The director offers up two scenes near the end of the film that are so expertly staged, they'll have viewers squirming in their seats.

You can practically hear Polanski cackling with glee as the walls close in on the Ghost, and this perverse humour — absent from a lot of the filmmaker's recent work — is part of what makes The Ghost Writer such a treat. Along with menace, there's a lot of wit in the film, with a sign that reads "Love worth killing for?" popping up in one instant, a word puzzle right out of Rosemary's Baby (1968) figuring in a key scene, and Alexandre Desplat's insistent, Hitchcock-inspired score jerking us this way and that.

One of The Ghost Writer's most darkly comic scenes arrives when the writer spies Lang's groundskeeper through his office window. Faced with the island's always inclement weather, the man struggles to sweep up a pile of leaves, which keeps getting scattered in the wind. It's vintage Polanski — the lone figure persisting in his task, even though forces seem to be conspiring against him. Coming from a director currently under house arrest in Switzerland, the notion is resonant. Polanski's future is uncertain, but if The Ghost Writer is any indication, as a filmmaker at least, he intends to go down swinging.

The Ghost Writer opens March 5.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBC News.