Spy films come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they come in the form of a romantic action-adventure film. That’s the case with Ghosted. It stars two of the biggest stars on the planet Ana de Armas and Chtis Evens. No strangers to this type of movie. It even has a very respected filmmaker attached to it. Dexter Fletcher. Even the writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, have had a pretty good career this far in Hollywood. This film isn’t as typical as most would think though.
Sadie (Ana De Armas) an art curator who meets Cole Turner (Chris Evans) a farmer in Washington DC, At a streetside shopping area they don’t like each other at first, but they seem like they could get along. They go on a long walk together and get a drink. Sadie kisses him after spending one entire day with him. He walks her home, and they end up having sex. Cole thinks Sadie might be the one until she never reaches out to him ever again. When he realizes he lost his asthma inhaler which has a tracking device in it, he uses it to find her. His pretty smart sister seems like a realist and the conscience of the audience, She dissuades him from pursuing this relationship., but he goes to London, England to find her anyway. What he gets is more than he bargained for.
This movie has a lot going on in it. A kidnapping by Tim Blake Nelson’s character, who has an Eastern European accent. He is looking for a passcode, and as an interrogation tactic he uses insects, Sadie saves Cole, and he finds out she’s an undercover CIA Agent, she’s the taxman, a special agent alias but the bad guys think he is. The film is full of action sequences. One of them is on a road near some cliffs in Pakistan on The Khyber Pass.
While together the two main actors have a lot of romantic banter. They play hard to get even though there is a lot of sexual tension between them. Their chemistry is pretty off the charts between de Armas and Evans. That is a key element of the movie. If this chemistry doesn’t work the whole film falls short of expectations. The director Dexter Fletcher, not known for this kind of movie gets a lot of mileage out of this sexual tension and romantic banter between the two leads. Also written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who have a good track record. The film doesn’t waste it’s amazing talent in front of the cameras or behind it.
A funny sequence where Leveque’s (Adrien Brody) character puts a bounty of one million dollars on the heads of the lead characters, and the various actors who play them are quite the surprise dse. Anthony Mackie is one of the bounty hunters. He has a reunion with Chris Evans for a split second, Jon Chow “The Leopard” is another bounty hunter and Sebastian Stan “God” is a third bounty hunter. They are the only ones though but I won’t give away all the surprises in this review.
Besides the one, I mentioned there are a few other action sequences. One fight sequence on a plane was pretty cool. It ended with the two leads Evans and de Armas parachuting out and landing on an island in the Arabian Sea. The final sequence was pretty crazy as well. It involved a MacGuffin though. A device called Astec is a biochemical weapon. Roger Ebert made this term famous. It means something that keeps the film moving along like an item or please. Such as this device and the word passcode.
This film was a pretty sprawling one that started in the United States, went to London, England, various places in Pakistan, and the island, and ended up back in the United States. These types of movies use all of these locations to create a globetrotting adventure film fans can get behind. And it worked in this case. Throw in all the action scenes and this film is filled with all kinds of typical tropes spy films and action movies use to build their story.
Ghosted starts out as one thing, a romantic comedy, and ends up as something entirely different. The two leads played by de Armas and Evans have incredible chemistry while the far-flung globetrotting story by Reese and Wernick kept me glued to the screen the entire two-hour run time. Popular spy movie tropes and action sequences abound and they are pretty cool. Fletcher combines multiple genres and fantastic acting to make an unusual action adventure spy comedy. This was a pleasant surprise this month.
Ghosted Streams on Apple TV + April 21st
4 stars
Dan Skip Allen
From the Fourth Row! 