Derek Elley‘s partial trashing of The Hurt Locker at the 2008 Venice Film Festival told me I had to henceforth regard his reviews with a grain of salt. That said, his Berlin Film Festival pan of Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer seems to put a damper on expectations.
I’m particularly concerned about this passage: “Pic’s literalism is also its biggest handicap. Eight years since his last major success, The Pianist, the 76-year-old helmer brings not a jot of his own directorial personality or quirks to a political pulp thriller whose weaknesses (let alone lack of any real action or thrills) are laid bare when brought to the screen is such a workmanlike, anonymous way.”
