Ghosted Film Review

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

The 355 Film Review

And lo, it was written that the month of January is the month of both soaring highs and crushing lows being the month whereupon studios release both films destined for shiny, pointless, irrelevant awards and others to be devoured alive by the arachnid monster.

The 355 is not destined for shiny pointless, irrelevant awards.

I mean to be fair I never expected anything other than a bog standard action flick but thats fine. It’s nice to see mid-tier films getting into cinemas, the types of films that people claim they want to see. It’s not part of an established franchise (and it’s certainley not going to become one if the global box office is to be believed) it’s just a good old fashioned tedious, dull, overlong bit of January lead.

I mean the plots nothing to write home about with your bog standard all-powerful McGuffin growing legs and a team uniting to stop evil rotters from doing evil rotter things with it. Proabably getting James Corden into more films… Or something of that level of evil villany.

Fine, I mean XXX: Return of Xander Cage had a similar plot (and budget) and that was an absolute energy drink of a film that I’ve frequentley enjoyed after a beer or three when nothing else is on TV that evening. I mean I’ll take it over this any day of the week and I won;t be comapring the two again because that’s not fair. I mean The 355 is full of people who couldn’t give a bad performance if their lives depended upon it, but the material kust isn’t there for them to work with.

I mean, if you haven’t worked out the plot beats/ THE BIG Twist in the first ten minutes then I’m just going to assume that you don’t get out much. Secondly, a film like this lives or dies on it’s action scenes and they just weren’t there. I mean, there were scenes that had action in, but they weren’t exciting, scenes that were supposed to be tense weren’t. And it’s not like there weren’t any promising scenes, there’s ont in a fish market where stealth is of the essence and that was cut short before it got going, another one towards the end that was meant to be tense but was too rushed to be so and to be frank, I just didn’t care about any of it.

Because the films main issue is that it’s cast is just too large and there wasn’t time for me to care about any of them. You had your lead team of 5 to establish, your villains, your heros families, what passes for a plot since there’s a bit of globetrotting involved but to my mind the whole budget was spent on getting this frankly amazing cast and then not giving them anything to do. Which brings me to my next point.

The central cast is just too large for a plot this simple.

You don’t need a cast of 5 leads, a villain, a lead goon and then other goons for a plot this simple. You just need the central pair who don’t trust each other, a tech person and your off to the races. You also need twenty minutes cut off the films runtime which you could have done had you cut the number of people in the filming thing!

Because at the end of the day, this film could have worked as a bit of fun but it doesn’t on any level. It’s too long, the action scenes too dull, the plot completely and utterly predictable, there’s too many people in it which leads to the budget being spent not on fight or chase scenes where it should have gone and I’ve had better times with films that have the exact same plots starring both male and female leads.

Dull is dull.

My Score- Skip It