Ghosted
Chris Evans plays a farmer whose horticultural expertise comes in handy when he becomes embroiled in a high-stakes espionage debacle.
Chris Evans and Ana de Armas
Cole Riggan (Chris Evans) really loves his plants. As far as human beings are concerned, he’s just broken up with his girlfriend (“we grew apart”) and really doesn’t want to talk about it. Then, stepping into help out at a flower stall of a friend (who pops off to get high), he enters into an argument with a customer over the purchase of a begonia. The customer, Sadie (Ana de Armas), admits that she won’t have time to water it, but that she wants it anyway. Cole can’t bear the thought of a begonia dying of neglect. One thing leads to another and after the first contretemps, there’s coffee, then a walk through the more picturesque backwaters of Washington DC. He even takes Sadie to the famous Exorcist steps in Georgetown, only to discover she hasn’t seen the film. It still gives him nightmares, but Sadie can’t be scared by mere movies because, as she says, “you can choose not to be scared.”
Cole and Sadie are obviously poles apart but there’s a sexual chemistry, corroborated by the film’s catchphrase – delivered by anybody who overhears them bickering (“you two should get a room”). And the bickering leads to the National Gallery of Art where Sadie begins to tell Cole her backstory, of how she escaped her country on a raft. He listens intently but, oddly, doesn’t ask her which country she comes from. And that’s a problem with much of the film: it only tells us what we need to know, not what would have made the characters plausible. Cole thinks he’s in love but he hasn’t been asking the right questions and, after sending her eleven texts – and a few emojis – he’s beginning to think that he’s been ghosted. However, he’s left his inhaler in her handbag and like all good inhalers, it comes with its own tracker, which he follows to Tower Bridge in London, his first trip abroad…
We need to stop there as Ghosted is not Eat Pray Love but an international spy caper more in the tradition of Romancing the Stone. Actually, it’s the sexual flipside of Romancing the Stone, as Cole is completely out of his depth and Sadie is a kick-ass spy for the CIA. De Armas previously exhibited her martial skills as a Cuban CIA agent in No Time to Die, and replaced Scarlett Johansson in Ghosted when the latter had to pull out. The more interesting casting choice is Chris Evans as the quarry in the quagmire, repeatedly relying on de Armas to save his neck. Of course, Evans made his name as the redoubtable Captain America and played the psychopathic ex-CIA agent Lloyd Hansen in The Gray Man – opposite de Armas’s fearless CIA agent Dani Miranda. It’s interesting that for a Cuban national, de Armas has portrayed so many CIA agents, although in her next film, Ballerina, she is playing the balletic title role (who also happens to be an assassin).
Ghosted moves along nicely enough, with the usual quota of shoot-outs and stunts (including a cuticle-chewing chase along the Khyber Pass). But the scenery-nibbling villains (Adrien Brody, Tim Blake Nelson), the multiple plot twists and exotic locations add up to a familiar mix, even with the male-female dynamic flipped on its head. Both Evans and de Armas are engaging, although neither can wring a note of credibility out of their lines. The eye candy is sweet yet proves to be an all-too familiar taste.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Mike Moh, Amy Sedaris, Tate Donovan, Tim Blake Nelson, Marwan Kenzari, Anna Deavere Smith, Lizzie Broadway, Mustafa Shakir, Tiya Sircar, Stephen Park, Burn Gorman, John Cho, Dexter Fletcher, Victoria Kelleher, Anthony Mackie, Ryan Reynolds, Sebastian Stan, Israel Vaughan.
Dir Dexter Fletcher, Pro David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jules Daly, Chris Evans, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Ex Pro Ana de Armas, Screenplay Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, Ph Salvatore Totino, Pro Des Claude Paré, Ed Chris Lebenzon, Jim May and Josh Schaeffer, Music Lorne Balfe, Costumes Marlene Stewart, Sound Lee Gilmore, Chris Terhune and Dan Kenyon.
Apple Studios/Skydance-Apple TV+.
116 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 21 April 2023. Cert. 12.
