Seeing Chris Evans outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feels a bit like running into your therapist at the grocery store. There's nothing technically wrong with such a random encounter. But it still feels weird.
In "Ghosted," Evans plays a clingy boyfriend swept up in a surprise bit of international espionage, but here's the thing: he doesn't come with a shield this time. Unless you count Ana de Armas as his shield, given that she does protect him for most of the film.
Evans plays a homebody farmer named Cole working a stand for his family's agriculture business during a farmers market when he meets Sadie (de Armas). She's looking for a plant that can survive on its own while she's gone for international work over weeks at a time. Evans has just been dumped by a girl for being too clingy, and Sadie seems to have trouble truly trusting people.
After a big fight about plants, and some encouragement from other people at the market, Cole follows Sadie to her car to ask if she wants to get coffee. I think you can imagine what happens from there. They surprise each other and spend the day together.
Cole is instantly smitten, but when Sadie seemingly ghosts him, not responding to any texts, the farmer gets the crazy idea to track an inhaler that he left in her bag. It has a little electronic tag on it because apparently one of his personality traits besides "plants" is losing his stuff. At the encouragement of his parents (who, for the record, give awful advice), Cole flies off to London to surprise Sadie.
Of course, he's the one who is surprised after being drugged and abducted by terrorists who mistake him for a spy called the "tax man." Just before they can torture him for a secret code that Cole obviously doesn't have, Sadie breaks in and rescues him, revealing that she's a spy for the CIA. She's also the actual tax man.
Thus begins their globetrotting, action-packed adventure to recover a secret weapon in a locked briefcase, all while bickering about their relationship, and trying not to die. Honestly, this premise seems more like something Jennifer Anniston and Adam Sandler would star in together. Maybe "Ghosted" is Apple TV+'s answer to Netflix's "Murder Mystery."
I'll give the movie this: the action and the laughs are solid. And the cameos they manage to pack in are what makes this movie as good as it is. I won't spoil them for you, but when the bounty hunters showed up, I was almost on the floor in tears laughing. And it's right in the middle of the film, too, so it comes out of nowhere. My wife and I will be quoting "They call me the leopard," and "They called you the leopard," to each other for weeks to come.
Evans makes for a great goofball who has no clue what he's doing during the action scenes, and de Armas, fresh off of a Bond film, makes for a competent assailant. "Ghosted" comes with a fantastic chase sequence involving a bedazzled bus and several attacking henchmen.
On the romance side of the story (because this is still half of a rom-com), de Armas and Evans are certainly on the screen together. They're OK. But when other characters in the movie have to repeatedly tell the audience these two leads have sexual tension, it's a bit ... "Any man who must say 'I am the king' is no true king."
The pairing isn't awful. It's just lackluster. Cole is given some pretty toxic character traits right off the bat that put him at a deficit. And that's not Evans' fault. These choices were written into the script for reasons beyond me, immediately badmouthing ex-girlfriends and tracking someone without consent were a bit much when clinginess alone would've been a satisfactory character flaw.
"Ghosted" could use a trim. Shaving the 116 minutes down closer to 90 minutes would've been preferable, losing some of the bickering and tightening up the plot.
It's a fun movie overall, worth watching at least once for the laughs and action. Adrien Brody makes for a serviceable villain, even if audiences have seen this particular spy plot before.
"Ghosted" is available on Apple TV+ today.