Chris Evans and Ana De Armas Reunite For The Outdated Action Rom-Com ‘Ghosted’ — Film Review
Boy meets girl and falls in love. The girl is a spy, and unforeseen circumstances force her to drag the man into her perilous world. That’s the basic premise of Dexter Fletcher’s Ghosted, which fails to expand upon the meet-cute turns action blockbuster concept.
Cole (Chris Evans) is a down-on-his-luck farmer who meets the gorgeous Sadie (Ana de Armas) at a food market. While Cole is covering a friend’s flower stand at the market, she tells him she is only interested in plants that aren’t needy because she works abroad so much; there is not much subtlety here. After some cutesy banter that turns into actual arguing, and with a little nudge from the friend, he asks her out. On a date that goes on till morning, she tells him she is an international art dealer, and they discuss their fears, get into their personal lives, and make each other laugh. They spend a blissful day together, and Cole is besotted. Before they can go on a second date, she ghosts him. Is it because she isn’t interested, is away on a work trip or was she put off by the multiple messages he sent in a row?
When Sadie doesn’t respond to his many messages and emojis, Cole has the great idea to follow his geotagged asthma inhaler-which was placed in Sadie’s bag while they were on their date-to London to find her. Despite never leaving the country and being a salt of the Earth homebody, Cole finally builds up the nerve to do something with his life that isn’t just working for the family business. Somehow, Evans is charming enough to mask the fact that Cole is a walking red flag.
As soon as he sets foot in London, he is kidnapped by evil spies who accuse him of being the mysterious “Taxman.” Sadie soon arrives to save him, revealing her true superspy identity; the Taxman. Cole is then swept up in an international game with the ghost who may be the one.
The half-an-hour rom-com introduction feels overdrawn, considering the “twist” is in all the promotional material. We are then swiftly introduced to a barrage of half-baked characters, meaningless weapons and cameos. It often feels like Ghosted is throwing everything it can at the wall and hoping at least one thing will stick.
Ana de Armas is well cast, if not underwritten, as CIA agent Sadie. de Armas’ wig is horribly distracting, but fans of her short but memorable performance in No Time To Die will be delighted by the amount of screentime she gets saving Chris Evan’s damsel-in-distress. It is evident that the pair had a blast making this film together, even if de Armas is the only one better suited for their role.
Chris Evans is entirely miscast for the role that is supposed to have us believe he is an outdoorsy type who can’t shoot a gun straight. It’s also hard to believe Evan’s Cole goes from absolute novice to being able to hold his own against international terrorists within two days. Casting the male as the damsel-in-distress was an innovative choice, but Evans, who has a history of being cast in the macho leading male roles for a reason, is too bright to play Cole. He simply does not have the homebody act down.
The villains come straight from a 70’s Bond film, not a good Bond film. Tim Blake Nelson plays a torturer with a comically bad Russian accent. Adrien Brody’s moustache-twirling bad guy can’t work out if he’s English or French, as his accent changes between sentences. Aside from the lead two characters, no one is well-written or memorable to warrant their big-name casting. Ghosted is a revolving door of poorly penned henchmen, underwritten CIA agents and bland field agents.
Dexter Fletcher, best known for directing Eddie the Eagle, Rocketman, and Bohemian Rhapsody, showcases his solid grip on filming action scenes. Ghosted has some pretty impressive stunts, which are let down by some distractingly wonky editing and subpar green screen work.
Ghosted also manages to deliver some remarkable deaths without showing any bloodshed. The final action sequence in a revolving restaurant is innovative and fresh, making you wonder where this energy and spirit were in the previous 2 hours.
Unfortunately, the movie is further hampered by the song choices; while most of the songs are relatively recent, they already feel incredibly dated. Songs like “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” “My Sharona” and “Uptown Funk” are shoehorned into scenes and blared over seemingly random scenes. The song choices exacerbate the feeling of unevenness.
Unlike Romancing the Stone and Sandra Bullock’s recent The Lost City, Ghosted is pretty light on the laughs. Any wit, charm and chemistry purely come from the leading duo, who carry an abysmal script. A large chunk of laughs will come from the cameos and the references to other projects from the lead actors.
Ghosted is an outdated and entirely forgettable action rom-com that feels more like a Netflix original than an Apple TV+ production. The leads, who reunite after appearing in Knives Out and The Gray Man, do the best with a script lacking humour and innovation and are riddled with unevenness.
Ghosted is streaming exclusivley on Apple TV+
by Amelia Harvey
Categories: Anything and Everything, Films, Reviews
Tagged as: action rom rom, action rom-com, Amelia Harvey, ana de armas, Apple TV+, Chris Evans, film review, ghosted, movie review, Review
Originally published at http://screen-queens.com on April 20, 2023.
