Salt-of-the-earth Cole falls head over heels for enigmatic Sadie — but then discovers she’s a secret agent. Before they can decide on a second date, Cole and Sadie are swept away on an international adventure to save the world.
Chris Evans and Ana de Armas worked well together in Rian Johnson’s 2019 smash hit, “Knives Out.” Evans played a cocky, pretentious, yet resilient douchebag, while de Armas was quiet and disarmingly charming. Next, they starred together in “The Gray Man” but shared very few scenes. In “Ghosted,” de Armas plays Sadie Rhodes, a tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners CIA spy, while Evans plays Cole Turner, a farmer who falls for Sadie after she buys a plant from his stall at the local farmers market. After an amazing first date, he begins to have doubts when she never responds to any of his follow-up texts.
Quickly realizing he left his asthma inhaler in her purse, which has a tile tracker attached, he traces her whereabouts to London, England. Wanting to surprise her romantically, he hops on a plane and tracks down her position but ends up in a rough part of town, where he is quickly apprehended and knocked out. When he awakens, he realizes he’s involved in a case of mistaken identity, as the kidnappers think he is a rogue CIA asset called the Taxman. Just as they are about to torture him for the passcode for Aztec, a high-security case that houses a deadly virus that could kill thousands, Sadie turns up and wipes them all out.
Asking Cole what he’s doing in London, he tells her he wanted to surprise her with a romantic gesture, but she is not feeling impassioned. Angrily, she accuses him of being too needy and clingy, having sent her an excessive amount of texts in two days and sabotaging her mission. Just as Cole learns of her true identity, they are chased down by some more bad guys, and after an exciting getaway, Sadie informs Cole that the bad guys now think he is the Taxman and will send more men after them. She convinces Cole that they must team up to take down the bad guys, but with the two of them filled with suspicion and hesitancy toward each other, this mission will either kill them or bring them together.
“Ghosted” makes for a nice change of scenery; in the past, the spy role would typically have been played by Evans, while de Armas would have portrayed the oblivious girlfriend but having them switch roles made the story more entertaining. It was strange watching Evans getting beat up by the bad guys when you’re so used to him being Captain America and beating everyone else’s ass, but that was the whole point, to take both actors out of their comfort zones. Both Evans and de Armas, having worked together twice before, are more than comfortable onscreen, and adding the romantic element makes their pairing even more watchable as they share undeniable chemistry.
The story is as stereotypical as you can get and reminds you of other films that utilized the same premise; “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” “Knight and Day,” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” but it is elevated by its two lead performances, who add the much-needed gravitas and believable onscreen magnetism needed for you to believe the story in the first place. The movie is filled with cameos from fellow Avengers and Marvel co-stars, and naturally, the ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel, but whether one ever sees the light of day is yet to be seen. However, if it does, the possibilities are endless.
Available to stream exclusively on Apple TV+ Friday, April 21st
