Continuity mistake: When the Ghost writer stops the BMW to follow the sat nav there is a car in the background. It vanishes then reappears as the film changes from close up to panoramic shots.
The Ghost Writer (2010)
Ending / spoiler
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, James Belushi, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams
The Ghost finds out that Adam has links to a professor from Cambridge, who was working for the CIA. He is contacted by a fired minister hoping to expose Adam as a puppet of the United States. They make him confront Adam while on a plane flight, but he merely makes him angry with his accusations. When they land, the angry father of the son who died in Iraq shoots and kills Adam from a rooftop, then is shot himself by Adam's bodyguard. The Ghost is held for questioning as a key witness. At his hotel in New York, he meets with his agent but tells him he has been through too much to finish the book, so his agent tells him to rest up and he will finish it for him. The book gets published and The Ghost meets the distraught Amelia outside of the book's release party, still reeling from Adam's death. At the party, Ghost offers her a present, the original manuscript of the book. She tells him that it was flagged as a possible threat to national security, something about "Beginnings." Ghost spots Adam's friend the professor, and Amelia tells him that he was Ruth's tutor at Cambridge. Realizing that something is wrong, he goes into a back room to check the manuscript. He realizes that the first word of each chapter reveals the following hidden message from the first Ghost: 'Langs wife Ruth was recruited as a CIA agent by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University'. He passes Ruth a note as she delivers her speech about her late husband, and she reads it with a look of shock, knowing that her secret has been found out. The Ghost leaves the party with the manuscript in hand, and a car speeds down the street and runs him down off-screen. A thump is heard and the pages of the manuscript float down the street, carried off by the wind.
matthew
More mistakes in The Ghost Writer
Robert Rycart: They can't drown two ghost writers. You're not kittens.
Trivia: McGregor finds that the BMW navigation system is active, and decides to follow the directions, having no idea where it will lead. There are obviously much easier and direct ways to check the entered target destination of a sat nav than actually following it. Instead of this being a mistake, it is most likely a script choice; portraying McGregor as stressed, technically unknowing, inexperienced driver of modern luxury cars, or all of that.
Question: Was the ghostwriter murdered? Why? The book had already been published, and he only discovered the truth about Ruth minutes before, so who would have wanted him dead?
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Answer: Who would want him dead? Ruth, for one, as well as Professor Emmett (her CIA recruiter) and others involved in the conspiracy. Yes, the book had been published, but the secret message only comes across if one is in possession of all the knowledge that the writer had acquired, which the casual reader would not have. And minutes is plenty of time for Ruth, Emmett, or anyone else to make a phone call and arrange the hit.
The published book was a rewrite and would not have the secret message in the chapter beginnings.
The published book was a rewrite of the original manuscript. He gives her the original manuscript that he was working off, not a final draft.
We know the beginning of the book was rewritten as he didn't like it. Almost certainly, the clue is not in the published version of the book. Ruth was shocked to read the note and is delivering her speech so is unlikely to be complicit in the murder of the Ghostwriter. The ending suggests that Ruth, too, is little more than a pawn in the whole conspiracy.
Makes no sense, he was run down 2 minutes after she read it.