LONDON: The new Apple TV+ romantic thriller “Ghosted” wants you to know just how self-aware this movie is. After all, it has global action megastar Chris Evans as — get this — a humble farmer with needy attachment issues who is about as far from Captain America as you can get. It’s an action film, where the lead character is awful at action. Which is funny, right? Because he’s famously good at being in action films, yeah?
“Ghosted” is a romantic thriller. (Supplied)
All this is spelled out in the first half hour. Evans plays Cole, a handsome homebody with a tendency to scare women away by coming on a little strong. When he meets Sadie (Ana de Armas), the pair hit it off and Cole wonders if maybe, this time, he can play it cool. But when she doesn’t text him back immediately, Cole immediately ramps up the creepiness by following her on a work trip to London, where he learns that she is, in fact, a CIA agent, and he is now a hapless civilian caught up in a world of high-octane stunts and world-ending superweapons. Which is funny because, as you’ll remember, Chris Evans is famously good at being in action films, right? Right!
What really hamstrings “Ghosted” — aside from the bizarrely repetitive direction by usually reliable Dexter Fletcher, and his use of the same ‘stop-the-music’ gag about three times too many — is the fact that any story like this inevitably hinges on believable chemistry between the two stars. And, sadly, Evans and de Armas — as good-looking a couple as they undoubtedly are — are about as convincing as the leads in a mediocre high-school play. All the neat set pieces in the world can’t cover up the lack of any kind of ‘rom’ in this rom-action movie. It says a lot when a flurry of (very funny) cameos are the best thing about a film. Audiences might want to give “Ghosted” a swipe left.
