Tag: Tom Wilkinson

What’s this? The Ghost Writer is actually based off of a book called The Ghost by Robert Harris, some British dude?

What is more surprising is that I actually knew about the book before the movie, and own the book. Me! Reading! Hah!

Only reason I have the book is because the author currently has 2/3 of a fictional trilogy of Cicero going on and it kicked ass. So I bought more of his books. Tried to read a different one and kept getting bored. Whoops. Political stuff and I don’t get along too well.

To books! They are the future.

Ewan McGregor is hired to finish the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) a fake former prime minister of Britain. His character name gets to be The Ghost! Because he is a ghost writer. It is supposed to be an Autobiography but, you know, it will be mostly be someone else writing it from his notes. This is going to be a sure hit, and lots of money.

Especially since Adam Lang might be prosecuted for war crimes, by illegally detaining possible terrorists and giving them to the CIA for torturing. Yikes. A lot of people don’t like that.

It should also be noted that Ewan is the second Ghost writer brought in because the last one who was doing it drowned. Which kind of sucks. This involves getting to stay in their resort house, all gated and protected, with the assistant Kim Cattrall, and Lang’s wife, Olivia Williams, to make sure he doen’t do too much bad stuff. But Ewan begins to find weird clues, including a phone number that calls the man who is bringing charges against Lang! Ewan also checks the GPS of the former writers car, and decide to visit the last place he visited. Huh, its a Pulitzer prize winner who has been dealing with the CIA since the 70s (Tom Wilkinson).

Is it possible that the former prime minister might have been a CIA agent this whole time?

He might be! Depends on how charismatic he is.

From what I can tell, this was a well directed and acted political thriller.

Unfortunately, I are dumb with politics, as I already mentioned. I knew this was also a fictional jab at Tony Blair and his friendliness with the US, and that maybe people are mad at him.

But I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Tony Blair or what the UK did during 9/11 and Iraq/Afghanistan wars. Seriously. So I’d say that if you know about all this stuff, this might be a better movie for you. If you don’t know a damn thing, it might be confusing.

I read a plot outline on wikipedia as I watched to make sure I was not missing thing as it was happening (which I was). Just general things I didn’t understand and made the film more confusing to me. Sometimes a guy just needs things spelled out. Hah.

After reading what I had just watched, turn out it was kind of interesting. But because of just being about things I have no knowledge in, it made the film just a movie.

Honestly, when I first heard about Valkyrie, I just assumed it was another fictional plot movie about people killing Hitler. But this time, the accents don’t exist, and Tom Cruise wears an eye patch!

AN EYE PATCH GUYS! What! Pirates up in this place, killing Hitler and the Nazis. Sounds wundebar.

Oh, it was a real thing and failed attempt to kill Hitler? Oh okay. My bad, history.

I hope you will accept this crooked hat as a proper assurance of my badness.

Let me tell you know. They don’t succeed in killing Hitler. But you knew that. Hitler killed himself near the end of the war. Not via a plot of some German soldiers!

Movie begins with Tom Cruise looking normal. But thanks to an air strike, he loses an eye and his right hand.

Operation Valkyrie is a plan set in place involving using the reserve army to maintain order during a national emergency. They realize that if they can activate it, it might be a way to pull off a coop and get rid of the Nazi regime in Germany. But the only guy who can pull the button, won’t do a thing with Hitler still alive.

Alright, simple enough, kill Hitler, pull off the operation, end the war from the inside out. Boom!

Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson are some of the officers involved in doing this stuff. Character names are hard, because they are all german and stuff. Except for Tom Cruise. He is supposed to be German, but talks like Tom Cruise.

A lot of the film is planning and setting up. Because a lot of time was spent in real life too. They do succeed in pulling off Operation Valkyrie, but did they successfully kill off Hitler? Nope. Of course not. So their plan probably won’t work. And it might mean pretty bad things.

Like giving up their rare trading cards!

Movie was a lot better than I imagined. Actually bought this thing about a year ago but just…continued to never watch it. Gotta love that.

I wasn’t bugged by accents of course, but that was a big complaint people had years ago. The attempt was interesting, but not as straightforward as I would have liked. Or as action-y. Not sure why they devoted a whole movie to an act of failure. Successes must be running low, eh?

It was slow at times too, so I think they could have probably cut a lot of the movie out and still told the story correctly. It would have made it a better experience overall for me, at least.

True story alert! Kind of.

Burke and Hare (which has been a movie before) is loosely based on the murders committed by William Burke and William Hare in Scotland in the 1800s.

The main difference is that the 70s version was a horror, so presumably scary. The modern version is a dark comedy, and thus well…strange.

I feel like they are staring into my soul.

Burke and Hare are played by Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis respectfully. The movie is narrated by Angus the Hangman, played by Bill Bailey, who begins the story with a hanging, of course. The corpse is normally sold to the highest bidder, between two doctors, Tom Wilkinson and Tim Curry. They both teach at medical schools and use the bodies for dissections, (While Curry is having to resort to live patients).

Burke and Hare are down in the dumps! They are out of cash, and all of their plans go awry. When Hare’s wife mentions an Inn-patron died, they give the body to Wilkinson, and receive a nice fund. They enter a deal that if they can give him two bodies a week, they will be handsomely rewarded! First they attempt to dig up bodies in a graveyard, but they aren’t fit for dissection. Bones and what not only.

So instead? Murder! Specifically those about to die (at first). Or bad people. Or whatever. Soon they also get mixed up with blackmailers. Aka someone they have to give money too for “protection”. Hare wants to save up money to start a funeral parlor business (Which may be the first of its kind). Burke spent a lot of his money on the production of an all woman theater group for MacBeth. Starring Isla Fisher of course.

But eventually people get suspicious. WILL THEY BE CAUGHT? (this is history, yes, kind of). WILL THEY HELP SCIENCE? (yes) IS THAT CHARLES DARWIN OVER THERE? (yes). Well that’s cool.

The movie was decently funny. Simon Pegg was not with his normal ensemble that you always see, but instead with Smeagol. That was a change.

But the thought of this guy being a murderer? Easy to grasp.

I am sure a lot of the history was embellished, but it is definitely and interesting story. Parts were decently amusing, but amusing is really as far as it went. I liked all the science tidbits in the movie, especially the scene at the end where they showed where William Burke is today. Who doesn’t love movies that give you those tidbits at the end?