Apple TV+, Coda aside, hasn’t exactly been hitting it out of the park with their original movies. Chris Evans is a charming actor, but since exiting the MCU, he hasn’t had too many hits. Ana de Armas is another charming actor, but her last few movies haven’t been too good even if she was literally the only good thing in Blonde. Still, putting Evans and de Armas in an action/romantic comedy on Apple TV+ is at least a tempting situation that might be worth a look.
That movie, Ghosted, is on the service now, and given a bit of back pain, I figure I should stay home this weekend. Anyway, maybe this will show an upswing for both actors.
Somewhat needy farmer Cole (Evans) meets Sadie (de Armas) at a farmer’s market. The two go on a date where everything that could go right absolutely does and the two hit it off. However, Cole is a bit dismayed when the woman he figures is “the one”. Figuring her for an art dealer, he sends a few too many text messages, but after getting no answer and refusing to believe he’s been ghosted, he leaves the United States for the first time ever to follow Sadie to London. Somehow, Cole finds himself caught by some anonymous goons, waking up much later in a cave where some guy is going to torture him with bugs because they think he is the mysterious “Taxman”. And if you don’t think that name won’t lead to a Beatles music cue later, you must be new to this planet.
However, Cole is then saved by Sadie. It turns out Sadie, the actual Taxman, is a CIA operative with a lot of skills that lead to the sorts of action movie set pieces that Evans used to do all the time as Captain America. It seems French arms dealer Leveque (Adrien Brody) has a WMD that Sadie is trying to get back, and Cole just made a mess of the whole thing. Oh, and she wasn’t too pleased with all his texting either. He, likewise, isn’t pleased to know the woman he was looking for was a CIA agent with a lot of kills on her resume. Can these two work things out when they both have fairly reasonable reasons to not like each other and stop Leveque from selling the bioweapon?
So, bottom line: this was a lot of fun and may have been the best original movie I have seen yet on Apple TV+, Coda notwithstanding. Then again, that’s a low bar to leap. Ghosted is a fun, lighthearted movie with a lot of nice action scenes and two actors with really good chemistry having what looks like fun. Evans has, in my general observation, been trying to get away from the sort of typecasting that could otherwise hamper his career in the future, and he’s actually done an admirable job of playing characters as unlike Captain America as it is possible to get. Cole is another variation on that in that, despite the fact he looks like Chris Evans, he’s pretty much a big dork. As for de Armas, she brings good moments to her scenes whether she’s supposed to be saving the day as an all-business CIA agent or as a regular person who maybe doesn’t know how to interact with people. Yeah, the two ending up together is hardly a surprise, but the movie actually even finds a way for Cole’s general knowledge of plants to come in handy a few times.
While hardly perfect, Ghosted was an incredibly charming movie with a lot of nice moment. My personal favorite may be a bounty hunter scene with a number of surprise cameos. But when the movie needs to be funny, it generally is. When it needs to be exciting, it generally is. There are funnier movies, and there are many with better action scenes. But last I checked, you won’t find too many like that on Apple TV+.
Grade: B-
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