by Paul Mount
Dexter Fletcher directs this likeable, action-packed rom-com/thriller starring Chris Evans as an unwilling accomplice to the globetrotting exploits of an undercover agent played by the vivacious Ana de Armas. Cole Turner (Evans) meets up with Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) at a farmer’s market. He’s perplexed when, after a (very) successful first date, she doesn’t seem keen to acknowledge his texts or return his calls. She’s ghosting him, kids! He finds out that she’s in London (something to do with a tracking device on an inhaler?). However, his ill-advised (and not at all creepy) plan to drop in on her unannounced halfway across the world goes wrong when he’s immediately kidnapped by a terrorist group who mistake him for a spy called ‘Taxman’. A disgraced French intelligence agent named Leveque (Adrien Brody) is keen to get his hands on a lethal bioweapon called ‘Aztec’ but needs the passcode – which he believes the ‘Taxman’ possesses – to activate it. Cole is rescued by Sadie, and the pair embark on a breakneck race to keep one step ahead of Leveque, which involves some spectacular action set pieces, punch-ups aplenty and an exhilarating chase sequence through the Khyber Pass.
It’s all hugely entertaining Saturday night fluff, enlivened by the chemistry between Evans (clearly enjoying playing the everyman rather than the superhero) and de Armas (cast as a last-minute replacement for Scarlett Johansson). It’s undemanding stuff, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s a film that encourages you to sit back and enjoy the familiarity of its set-up (think Mr and Mrs Jones and the underrated Tom Cruise flick Knight and Day) and revel in the unpretentiousness of a film that only exists to entertain for a couple of hours. MCU fans will enjoy the cheeky cameos by Evans’ former Marvel co-stars Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan as hapless bounty hunters. Good fun.
Ghosted is streaming now on Apple TV+
