Ghosted | Review
Ana De Armas and Chris Evans in Ghosted
A Time to Love and a Time to Spy: Fletcher Falls for Love Fool Formula with Diffuse Intrigue
By Nicholas Bell | Published on April 22, 2023
It’s a tale as old as situational comedy itself, the inherent fun in the mistaken identity merry-go-round of romance compromised by sinister professional secrets. For his fifth film in the director’s seat (not counting his purported contributions to 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody), Dexter Fletcher dusts off a hoary Hollywood formula with the glossy Ghosted. Following his Elton John biopic Rocketman (2019), it’s somewhat of a continuation of the actor-turned-director trading in the scruffy charms of his films for familiar tropes, tapping into the coven of the contemporary A-list with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, each cast against type. The story itself might have been somewhat of a progressive novelty about twenty years ago, when this scenario of someone falling in love with a secretive persona (an assassin, a CIA agent, a mobster, etc.) was more often factored into the masculine realm (but nothing really beats the equanimity afforded the lovers of 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor). This time around, de Armas is a lonely hearted CIA agent whose one night stand with a codependent-in-waiting formulates this overly long series of international misunderstandings. And while there’s nothing egregiously wrong with the script from Marvel alums Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick (Deadpool; Zombieland), and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (the last trilogy of Spider-Man films), there’s nothing inherently compelling, either, which makes a running time of nearly two hours feel a bit flagrant.
The initial set-up holds a bit of promise, with Evans playing a questionably pathetic man, Cole Turner, who has been forced to put his novel aside to care for his ailing father (Tate Donovan) and the family farm just outside of Washington, D.C. At a farmer’s market, he has a predictable and somewhat unsatisfying meet-cute with Sadie (de Armas), posing as an art curator having something close to a depressive episode over the recent death of a colleague. A whirlwind one-night stand leaves Cole instantly smitten. Since his family has some interesting notions about romance and boundary issues, his mom (Amy Sedaris) and dad urge him to fly to London, where he realizes Sadie is located because he accidentally left his inhaler in her purse (eye roll) which has a tracker (another eye roll). Only his sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway) is on hand to provide a dissenting voice of reason.
Moments later, Cole is abducted in London (by none other than a menacing Russian played by Tim Blake Nelson), who believes Cole is the notorious agent known as The Tax Man, preparing to torture him with giant insects who belong to the same family as Murder Hornets. Thankfully, he’s saved by Sadie, the actual Tax Man, but it’s too late. A labyrinthine intersection of clandestine criminal factions now believe Cole is their man, and an extra complicated plot involves a French baddie named Leveque (a very non-Gallic Adrien Brody) requiring a DNA sequenced passcode to open a briefcase containing a biochemical weapon named AZTEC (someone tells us its powerful enough to wipe out the entire Eastern Seaboard just so we know this shit is serious). Not unlike the John Wick universe, a syndicate of intersecting criminals respond to a bounty on the bickering couple’s heads, which does allow for an amusing, if unnecessary smattering of cameo appearances from the likes of Anthony Mackie, John Cho, Sebastian Stan (and later on, Ryan Reynolds), even though none of them actually get to be funny beyond the lazy gag of their recognizable celebrity.
It’s a pity how monotonous Ghosted ends up feeling considering the zest of it’s set-up, which includes the film’s only bit of random strangeness thanks to the bizarrely functional dysfunction of the Turner family home, thanks mostly to Sedaris as a mother who seemingly enables her son’s clinginess. What exactly is wrong with Donovan, health wise, to necessitate his child’s move back home, strangely channels a similar scenario involving the Alan Ruck patriarch in the television series reboot of The Exorcist, a footnote which looms large thanks to the 1973 Friedkin classic providing Sadie and Cole with material for pseudo amazing flirt banter. While Ghosted is certainly more tolerable than Netflix’s insufferable Red Notice (2021), it’s a far cry from the spy comedy of errors it could have been. For Fletcher, this neutered trend will likely continue thanks to his inheriting the Sherlock Holmes franchise from Guy Ritchie.
★★☆☆☆