Summit Entertainment has announced that Roman Polanski's latest film, The Ghost Writer, will open in limited release in the U.S. on February 19, expanding to more cities throughout March. Where will Polanski be when his film opens in this country? He's currently in Switzerland, waiting for the justice ministry to decide whether to extradite him to the U.S., where he would be sentenced on charges of unlawful sex with a minor, to which he pled guilty in the late 1970s (he's since asked to be sentenced in absentia).

The Ghost Writer is an adaptation of the Robert Harris novel The Ghost, about a writer who works on a former British prime minister's autobiography and uncovers mysterious and perhaps dangerous goings-on. It stars Ewan MacGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall. The movie sounds like it has the potential to be a good solid thriller, no matter who the filmmaker might be.

The question is whether your decision to see this film is affected by Polanski's personal life: the sex-related charges, his fleeing from this country before sentencing. It's not a new question -- maybe you asked yourself the same thing before seeing The Pianist, Frantic or any of the filmmaker's movies from the 1980s onward. However, the extradition issues from late last year have brought Polanski's past back into the spotlight, in a way they were not when The Pianist was released, for example.





I think if we're going to start deciding which movies we want to see based on the cast and crew's arrest record, we'll have to carry a cheat sheet of Hollywood criminal activity around to theaters with us. (There's probably a website with that information; or if not, there will be.) On the other hand, I've sometimes been pulled out of the action in a movie by a reminder of the personal life of the filmmaker or actor and how it relates to what I'm watching -- whether it's a Woody Allen character exchanging rapid-fire dialogue with a teenager, or seeing Heath Ledger's character hanged in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

And if you do decide you want to boycott Polanski's films, how far do you want to take it? Do you also feel inclined to boycott the distributor, Summit, which also has brought us the Twilight films? What about the rest of the cast and crew, who agreed to work with Polanski? What about the high-profile actors who supported Polanski's fight against extradition?

Personally, I'll decide to watch The Ghost Writer based on whether I think I'll like the movie. I don't think Polanski's personal life will affect my potential enjoyment of the film. That isn't always true with filmmakers and actors and their controversies, but I'll let the Switzerland justice ministry and the American courts decide what to do about the consequences of the filmmaker's past.