It is interesting that Polanski was forced to edit his new political thriller “The Ghost Writer” while under house arrest in supposedly “neutral” Switzerland; especially when his new film revolves around unsettling political controversies and secrets. ‘Why did Tony Blair do exactly what White House and Dick Cheney wanted on numerous occasions’ is the main question buried in the depths of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer,” an extraordinarily precise and well-made political thriller—the best thing Polanski has done since the seventies, when he brought out the incomparable “Chinatown” and the very fine “Tess.” “The Ghost Writer” offers the steady pleasures of high intelligence and unmatchable craftsmanship. Working with the British writer Robert Harris, whose 2007 novel, “The Ghost,” serves as the basis of the movie, Polanski fed the political material—troubling stuff about rendition and C.I.A. collaboration—into the mazy convolutions of a neo-Hitchcock story. He presents the entire movie from the restricted point of view of a likable young man, a hard-drinking, cash-poor writer (Ewan McGregor), who has been hired to finish the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a former Prime Minister clearly modeled on Blair… ‘Don’t mess with the Powers that be…Mr Polanski’.