“The Ghost Writer”: This way to the beef.

Rejoice! There’s a new Roman Polanski film! And everyone is singing and dancing. Not without good reason, either. It’s not every day that this particular talent makes something just for us. Epileptics beware…it’s a wink-fest.

In the great director’s latest, Ewan McGregor again plays the Embroiled Straight Man  (a la “Deception,” only his character isn’t as bright here), this time as the eponymous ghost writer for Adam Lang, a handsome, charismatic, but ostensibly vacuous former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan). Lang recently sold his memoirs for 10 million to a big NYC publishing house, but his original ghost writer has “drowned” in an “accident.” McGregor’s character, who remains nameless throughout the film, takes a lucrative offer to replace the dead guy and flies out to a nearby Martha’s Vineyard-esque island where Mr. Lang is staying. But thanks to some clues left behind by the original ghost writer, he finds himself knowing a little too much about Mr. Lang’s dubious past.

To further complicate things, word is getting out in the media that Lang is guilty of torture-related war crimes and is avoiding his return to England, where he would face prosecution in international courts. News cameras and protesters are now flooding the island—including one furiously vengeful old British vet brandishing a poster of his dead son.

Sounds good, right? It is.

“The Ghost Writer” is an entertaining, taut, suspenseful, well acted, and even occasionally funny thriller about international politics and corruption. The dialogue is smart, the pacing is on par, and the movie uses one of those annoying personal GPS units in a way that might be worth the ticket price by itself. Watching it was a good time. I can say that without any hesitation.

But here’s what I can’t say about it. I can’t say—and these are recycled words from one of the great dance critics of our time—that the meat was in the sandwich. No, the meat of “The Ghost Writer” was all over the kitchen. Let me explain what this means, and why it may not even be a bad thing to have let a few cold cuts escape the ciabatta.

Although I can’t claim to comprehend 100% the unfathomable depths of JC Chasez’s critical commentary on Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew, I took his phrase “The meat was in the sandwich” to mean this: everything this dance crew wanted us to see, they had just lain before us.

Now if you take out “dance crew” and replace it with “Polanski” this judgment would not hold up regarding this movie. Everything Polanski wanted us to see has not been lain before us. There were prerequisites.

The real clout and richness behind this movie–that is, what the critics have responded to–lies in knowing about what happened to Mr. Polanski himself in real life. Having pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in Los Angeles in 1977, he went into a sort of self-imposed exile in Europe to avoid sentencing, and has pretty much been there ever since. This whole situation is obviously mirrored by Adam Lang’s reluctance to return to England to face the courts, so this movie can be viewed as Mr. Polanski’s commentary on his own situation.

And the exophoric shin-kicking does not end there. There are also obvious parallels between Adam Lang and real-life Tony Blair and subtler references to real-life scandals involving Dick Cheney’s Halliburton corporation as well.

So is this bonus material? Extra credit? Read any of the reviews of this movie and this is what they talk about—Polanski’s coy subversion. There’s something to be said for it, for sure. That same sort of subversion is what made “District 9” so well received last year. There’s art in threading your message, or your plaint, or whatever it may be, into a slick, commercially successful package and disseminating it to the public.

I don’t want to give anyone the idea that this wasn’t a good movie; it certainly was. But I think Mr. Polanski may have overdone it this time. There’s too much pointing and nudging. So much that “The Ghost Writer” starts to feel like a vessel for Mr. Polanski to discuss his politics and personal problems through allusions, and I can’t help but wonder what this movie would have been if the focus weren’t so much on the things outside of the movie’s world. It’s hard to evaluate this film without certain prior knowledge about the director, and that very fact makes me question its foundations. It could very well be hollow in there.

Personally, I prefer more of my meat in the sandwich. Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s something conceited about requiring an audience to know something about your personal life to fully appreciate your movie. But then again, there’s that old dictum: “write what you know.” And then there’s the assertion that true art makes its audience work…

I’m just saying that the work shouldn’t be “Google me.”