Ghosted

dir: Dexter Fletcher

2023

Ghosted is the kind of flick that you could make from the deleted scenes from a bunch of other action movies. Plus it very much coasts on the idea that Chris Evans and Ana de Armas make a cute couple, and that having one of the biggest stars of the Marvel flicks play a non-action hero, herb nerd / farmer is fucking hilarious.

Of these multiple premises, there’s only partial truth, or partial success, in any of them. Yes, de Armas and Evans on paper sound like a charming couple, and seemed to have a certain energy in the delicious Knives Out a few years ago, and a great big galoot like Evans as an underpowered shlub sounds funny. And they also starred in an action flick from last year called The Grey Man, though they played antagonists, which left me hoping that they’d gotten Ryan Gosling to play the villain this time, just to emphasise how interchangeable all these actors and components are.

And Ana de Armas, when she’s not playing Marilyn Monroe in the much maligned Blonde, is always playing some kind of superspy, since that’s what she played in the last Bond film, Grey Man last year, and will be playing in the John Wick spin-off Ballerina.

I shouldn’t be the guy saying this, but whatever happened to flicks where people just talk about stuff? Does everyone have to be shooting or punching someone in order to have a career?

In this era where generic spy action flicks, whether the lead character is Melissa McCarthy or Rowan Atkinson, are a dime a dozen, they need something to stand out a bit, because anyone can make them (with cheaper digital effects), especially if they’re only going to show them on streaming services. This flick doesn’t really try too hard to do anything to stand out, which is…fine.

There is only one sequence, incredibly silly, incredibly self-referential where I laughed my fucking arse off. The only way it works is if you having passing familiarity with the Marvel movies, especially the ones about or around Captain fucking America, but also another, lesser known series being the live action remake of classic Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop, where one of the main characters reprises his role as an incredibly stylish but bungling bounty hunter, and the other plays de Armas’ CIA boss.

Maybe the 2nd reference is a bit of a reach, but considering that two of the “stars” of that Netflix series both appear here, well, insert the I Understood That Reference meme.

Although…now that I think about it, no-one liked that live action Cowboy Bebop at all, AT ALL! They, the critics, the anime fans thought it was fucking terrible, the bipedal molluscs who will stream absolutely anything complained, and it was cancelled seemingly days after it premiered.

I thought it was really good! I thought John Cho and Mustapha Shakir were perfect non-animated versions of Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, and was disappointed when it was smothered in its crib. I’m always happy to see either of them turn up in stuff, especially now since they must be desperate for beer money.

One person I’m not as happy to see is Adrien Brody, who turns up as some strange, pointless villain, with a weird fucking accent. Is it French? Is it Italian? Is it Flemish? It doesn’t matter, it’s just bad and he’s ineffectual as an antagonist or a big bad, or even just as an adult person walking around and doing stuff.

The real villains are the two main characters, and the real heroes are, really, nobody.

In a “fresh” new take on the “I’m dating a spy!” sub-sub-genre of spy flicks where someone unknowingly gets sucked into international derring-do despite being a total civilian, a jerk at a farmers’ market called Cole (Evans), meets a girl called Sadie (de Armas) and they awkwardly do the opposite of hit things off. No other reviews will dare to tell you about this harrowing intro, but I’m NOT AFRAID. Oh, I’ll GO there. When Sadie looks at Cole from a far, before she gets to speak to him, she has this look like “Hm, he’s attractive looking, and he looks fit.” She is in the midst of a lifestyle crisis where she wonders about whether she should have some attachments.

Then she starts talking to him, and he seems like a know-it-all jerk. Not only that, but she tries to buy a fucking plant just to prove she’s not a completely selfish sociopath, and he’s all like “oh no, couldn’t possibly sell this to you, my conscience won’t allow it because clearly you will neglect it to death, you monster.”

Whatever attraction, whatever thoughts she might have had grind to an agonising halt. The drawbridge is up, she is repulsed, and then she’s gone, not wanting to ever see him again.

But hark, a few minutes later, she’s trying to drive away from the fucking farmers’ market when he abruptly jumps in front of her car, forcing her to slam on the brakes, make the plant in a pot she struggled to buy fall over in the back of her car and smash its pot.

Cole is back, telling her that he thought that he and she were having a horrible, offputting, argument before, but the other stall holders told him that maybe all of the ugliness, grandstanding and moral preening was actually this thing he’s heard about called “flirting”.

She looks at him with the cold eyes of a government assassin, and an entirely dry gusset, and calmly informs him that “No, that was not flirting.”

And yet, for the flick to have any longer running time, she has to entirely ignore all the red flags that sprung up everywhere the moment he started talking, and decide “I’ll give him a chance, perhaps because I’ve been so committed to my career, and I’m so lonely.”

THEN he starts being charming and smiles and talks in non-abusive ways, and they walk and talk, and get coffees, as if they’re Jessie and Celine from the Before… trilogy of films by Richard Linklater, flicks where two people navigate currents of desire and time and regret, as well as religion, philosophy, art, mortality, jealousy and love, above all else.

Here, you check your watch and think “when will these two idiots fuck?”

Because fuck they will, because otherwise the utterly stupid premise has nowhere to go. Also, they conveniently make Cole a forgetful little chap who attaches Bluetooth tags to stuff because he’s ever so forgetful, which allows him, and I am not making this shit up, track down and stalk Sadie when she doesn’t return his many texts in the following days.

The fact that Cole is that guy who becomes super clingy and controlling after a day meeting someone plays an outsized role in this flick. It’s played for humour, as in, it’s not seen as being as bad, mainly because if he really tried to threaten Sadie down the track, presumably it would be easy for her to kill him, since she kills hundreds of people in the course of her CIA work.

And then as the plot starts to unfold, such as it is, the two bicker painfully about what an unhinged stalker he is, and what a cold sociopath she is in turn.

It gets such that I actually preferred it when they weren’t talking, and were instead trying to kill the many people who are trying to kill them.

Cole gets mistaken for a super-efficient assassin / agent called The Taxman, and wouldn’t you know it, Sadie is the actual ‘Taxman’ of legend. But of course in this misogynist world of state sanctioned murder, the baddies keep believing Cole is the guy even when Sadie kills like 3 thousand henchmen.

From London the story goes to a very CGI Kashmir where there is a pretty good action sequence on a bus that is as fun as it is implausible, then Pakistan, where an ex-colleague and sexual partner of Sadie’s is so gross just before (thankfully) getting murdered, then Seattle I think for some revolving restaurant climax? It’s beyond stupid. Imagine the people who build a revolving restaurant at the top of a tower, and they debate whether they should spend, I dunno, $5 mill in order to give it the capacity to turn at a certain speed, or whether they should spend $30 mill in order to over-engineer it so if someone felt like it, they could spin the restaurant at such a speed that it would completely wreck the place and turn the whole place into a Graviton-style carnival ride.

C’mon, you jerks, that makes no sense. Is it visually interesting to see people having a shoot out or fighting people while the whole place is spinning faster and faster, all to either prevent or cause the release of some dreaded chemical?

Who cares. What we REALLY care about is whether Cole’s parents and sister are going to like Sadie, and how they’re going to maintain a work-life balance in the future. All of which *deep sigh of relief*, comes to pass, thank fuck.

Ghosted is an incredibly banal flick helmed by some competent people starring some attractive people whose dialogue mistakes venomous personal attacks and psychotic behaviour for charm or wit. It does kinda bring up the fact that people who kill lots of people for a living are kind of horrible people even if we enjoy watching them kill people while wearing stylish dresses slit up past the thigh, but, really, who watches these kinds of flicks hoping for intelligence, character and integrity?

Only fools like me.

5 times and then never explain why Sadie, despite being the CIAs top agent, barely speaks comprehensible dialogue out of 10

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“Normally, we like to start slow and build our way up. But you are special, so we begin with the Murder Hornet” – definite lack of patience in the torture community - Ghosted