Every now and then someone in Hollywood twigs that action films and romance films have very similar beats and figure that if they can somehow blend both together then they can get money from two different audiences as opposed to just the one genres money pool.
When this sort of works you get films like Mr and Mrs. Smith but more often than not it just doesn’t work. I’m talking about dross like Day and Knight and The Spy Who Left Me as examples off the top of my head.
And Ghosted is no Mr and Mrs Smith. If you can plough through the first twenty minutes (and I only did so with the help of my friends Mr. Gin and Mr. Tonic) you’ll find a fairly uninspired generic find the McGuffin action film.
Which is a shame because I like a lot of the things in this films favour. Ana Di Arnas was arguably the most beloved part of No Time To Die, Captain America can be fun and talented when someone knows what to do with him, I love spy films and the genre lends itself to the dying art of live action stunts.
And to be honest, it would be nice to see a spy film where the hero is still allowed to have a romantic interest.
Which I did sort of get.
It’s just that the film as a whole just doesn’t work.
Like I said, it’s a generic McGuffin hunt, which can be fun and is generally the easiest thing to build a spy film around. Hell, Mission Impossible 3 never even told us what the McGuffin actually was! But here, the McGuffin is well defined, the plot beats are generic and the action is pretty obvious CGI where someone like Tom Cruise would have done it for real in his spy franchise. It also didn’t help that for the first twenty minutes I swear by James Bond that the two leads were never in the same shot at the same time. Or that the villain sucks, or that the plot is so predictable that had I dozed off for some reason I would have known what was going on within seconds of waking up.
Plus, if you have to keep having side character’s literally say “The sexual chemistry here is off the charts” so many times that I could have created a much-needed drinking game. I mean I personally thought they had less sexual chemistry than I do with the lizard people in HR the last time I was told to attend an unexpected meeting.
But just because the film as a whole doesn’t work that doesn’t mean it has nothing good about it. There’s a fun scene in a market and, erm…. Well there’s a fun scene in a market.
I also liked the idea that And Di Arnas was the super spy and Chris Evans was the civilian. That’s a nice twist on the formula. It would have helped if Evans wasn’t basically a stalker but nobody’s perfect.
I also liked that erm…. Did I mention the scene in the market? I did? Blast.
I mean, once the film gets going it’s harmless enough but the trick is just getting there. And even once it does get going, there’s nothing you haven’t seen before, just because the two leads are very attractive that doesn’t mean that their going to spark off of each other.
And the thing is, this idea could work. Ana seems to be having fun, Chris is there, there’s a fun location for the final fight scene that was underdeveloped but still worked, and I did enjoy this films cameos.
But Ghosted is just more proof that spy films and rom-coms just don’t work together. It takes too long for things to start going bang because we’re trying to set up our leads meet cute and the fish out of water element long ago stopped being fun in spy films.
So yeah, this film is a mess and I didn’t enjoy watching it. You could have had the Chris Evans character be a former lover of Anas character who comes back into her life as she tracks down the deadly McGuffin and she has to navigate her feelings versus the mission and it would have been better. Or make him a lover turned foe. But whatever, I’ve seen it, I won’t see it again and I don’t think you should go near it with a ten-foot barge pole.
My Score- Skip It
danielsdunkings 