Ghosted (2023 film)

Not to be confused with Ghosted (TV series)

Ghosted (2023 film)
Official release poster
Directed by	Dexter Fletcher
Screenplay by	Rhett Reese Paul Wernick Chris McKenna Erik Sommers
Story by	Rhett Reese Paul Wernick
Produced by	David Ellison Dana Goldberg Don Granger Jules Daly Chris Evans Rhett Reese Paul Wernick
Starring	Chris Evans Ana de Armas
Cinematography	Salvatore Totino
Edited by	Chris Lebenzon Jim May Josh Schaeffer
Music by	Lorne Balfe
Production company	Apple Studios Skydance
Distributed by	Apple TV+
Release date	April 21, 2023 (2023-04-21)
Running time	116 minutes
Language	English
Country	United States

Ghosted is a 2023 American romantic action-adventure comedy film directed by Dexter Fletcher and written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna, and Erik Sommers, from a story by Reese and Wernick. The film stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas. Produced by Apple Studios and Skydance Media, it was released by Apple TV+ on April 21, 2023. It received generally negative reviews from critics.

Plot

Sadie, a successful but currently despondent CIA operative who is in between missions meets Cole, a charming but romantically needy farmer and vendor. Though initially arguing with one another, the two hit it off with an extended date, eventually culminating in sex. When Cole returns home, he texts Sadie, but receives no response; Cole’s sister suspects Sadie is “ghosting” him because of his needy communication. Despite being mocked, he is convinced by his family to surprise her in London, after locating her via a tracker on his inhaler that he accidentally left in her backpack.

Cole arrives in London and attempts to track down Sadie. Moments away from finding her, he walks into a trap created by arms dealers for a CIA operative nicknamed “Taxman.” He is drugged and taken to a cave in Pakistan. Torturers attempt to extract a passcode from Cole, believing him to be the Taxman. A masked operative infiltrates the cave and saves Cole; the operative reveals themself to be Sadie, who is also the “Taxman.” After a lengthy chase through Khyber Pass, the two escape the captors, who are revealed to be working for a disgraced French Intelligence agent named Leveque, who is in possession of a bio-weapon called “Aztec,” and attempts to sell it, despite not having the passcode to unlock it.

Cole and Sadie hide out in a nearby town. The two argue over lies they both previously told; Sadie had told Cole she was an art curator while Cole, in an attempt to impress Sadie, had told her he had traveled the world. An old contact and lover of Sadie, Marco, meets them in the town; he warns Cole about being Sadie’s boyfriend, as she cares more about the success of a mission than the life of a lover, much to Cole’s disappointment. Marco agrees to return Cole to the US so Sadie can continue her mission, but their plan is interrupted when Leveque places a bounty on Cole. Marco is subsequently killed by a bounty hunter, while Cole and Sadie are tossed around between bounty hunters, who inadvertently kill all of each other and allow the two to get free. While escaping, Cole reveals that the torturers were attempting to extract the passcode from him. Upon learning this, Sadie devises a plan to use Cole as bait to get closer to Aztec, knocking Cole out in the process.

Sadie claims the bounty for the Taxman, and delivers Cole to Leveque. The three meet, before Leveque departs and leaves his main henchman, Wagner, to unlock Aztec on a plane with Cole and Sadie. Their plan remains steady, until Wagner finds a picture on Cole's phone of Cole and Sadie together in bed. A fight breaks out in the cabin between Cole and Sadie and Wagner and his henchman. The henchman are temporarily defeated by Cole and Sadie, but Sadie is critically wounded and urges Cole to parachute out with the Aztec and leave her behind. Cole takes the Aztec but grabs Sadie and exits the plane.

The two land on an island, and Cole successfully treats Sadie’s wounds using materials from the island, and the two reconnect in the process. Wagner tracks the Aztec and assembles a squad to attack the island. Cole and Sadie are ambushed but are rescued by Marines; however, Wagner escapes with Aztec. Back at CIA Headquarters, Sadie is reprimanded and suspended for allowing Aztec to get away. When Sadie apologizes for putting Cole’s life before Aztec, Cole is again disappointed and encourages Sadie to learn to care for someone again. Though the agents are initially suspicious of Cole, he turns out to be of great services after helping decipher the passcode to Aztec. The agents formulate a plan to have Cole continue to masquerade as the Taxman and bait Leveque, who has become nervous under increasing pressure from his buyer, Mr. Utami.

The agents set up a meeting between Cole and Leveque at a high-end restaurant. Though Cole is made to believe he is completely safe, the field agents are quickly killed by Leveque’s men. Cole elects to continue the mission. Cole, Leveque, and Mr. Utami meet; the meeting begins to go sideways until Sadie shows up to help Cole, and reveals herself as the actual Taxman. She provides and sells the passcode to Mr. Utami for $10,000,000, and subsequently places a $10,000,000 bounty on Leveque as an escape plan. The restaurant erupts in chaos with bounty hunters, Utami and Leveque’s men, and Cole and Sadie. Cole is able to eliminate Wagner after tossing him in a gear mechanism, Leveque shoots Utami, but is ultimately killed after being launched through the window by Sadie’s shooting, who also recovers Aztec.

The two finally rekindle their love and begin a formal relationship, finding time with each other between and during Sadie’s missions.

Cast

• Chris Evans as Cole Turner
• Ana de Armas as Sadie Rhodes
• Adrien Brody as Leveque
• Mike Moh as Wagner
• Tate Donovan as dad
• Amy Sedaris as mom
• Lizze Broadway as Mattie Turner
• Mustafa Shakir as Monte Jackson
• Anthony Mackie as the grandson of Sam
• John Cho as the Leopard
• Sebastian Stan as God
• Ryan Reynolds as Jonas
• Anna Deavere Smith as Claudia Yates
• Tim Blake Nelson as Borislov
• Tiya Sircar as Patti
• Marwan Kenzari as Marco
• Stephen Park as Utami
• Humza Shabazz as the announcer
• Israel Vaughn as Martin
• Burn Gorman as the English cabbie
• Victoria Kellher as Edna
• Jordan Blair Brown as Joann
• Zane Shaw as Rock-aoke patron
• Stephanie Weis as Maitre D'
• Dexter Fletcher as Raoul

Production

In August 2021, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson entered negotiations to star in Ghosted, a film pitched by screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese to Skydance Media, with Dexter Fletcher attached to direct. In December 2021, Johansson had to exit the film due to a scheduling conflict, leading to Ana de Armas being cast in her place. In February 2022, Adrien Brody joined the cast. Mike Moh, Amy Sedaris, Tim Blake Nelson, and Tate Donovan would be added in March.

Principal photography took place from February to May 2022 at Tallulah Falls Lake in Tallulah Gorge State Park, Georgia; North Park Square, Marietta, Georgia; Chesapeake and Ohio Canal between Thomas Jefferson and 31st Street in Georgetown, Lincoln Book Tower, Ford's Theatre, and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, all in Washington D.C.. Scenes in the Khyber Pass mountains were filmed in New Mexico, while the city of Mingora, Pakistan, was filmed on a set in Atlanta.

Release

The film was released on Apple TV+ on April 21, 2023.

Reception

Critical reception

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 29% of 4.1 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 73/10. On the website, the critics' consensus reads, "Listlessly wafting between action, comedy, and romance without ever solidifying into a satisfying whole, Ghosted earns a chorus of boos." Using a weighted average calculator, Metacritic assigned the film a score of 36 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

Benjamin Lee, writing for The Guardian, gave the film one out of five stars, criticizing the lack of chemistry between Evans and de Armas and calling the film "a staggeringly, maddeningly atrocious heap of increasingly boneheaded decisions that will act as depressing documentation of just how rotten things got in the current oversaturated streaming landscape." Writing for RogerEbert.com, Peter Sobczynski also criticized Evans and de Armas's lack of chemistry as well as Fletcher's direction, negatively comparing the film to True Lies (1994), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and Knight and Day (2010), and calling the film "a tedious exercise in sheer greed and laziness that presumes if enough money and famous faces are tossed into the mix, no one will notice, or at least mind, the utter vacuousness of the enterprise"; he gave the film 0.5 out of four stars. David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C–" grade, criticizing the film's lack of commitment to its concepts and ideas, writing that the film "has no interest in anything more than a casual relationship with its audience, as it reliably stifles a joke or kills the mood the moment it suspects that you might be about to catch feelings."

Conversely, Stephanie Zacharek at Time noted Evans and de Armas's chemistry more positively while also noting the film's familiarity, writing, "Ghosted clacks along efficiently, ticking off all the expected boxes. There are no surprises here, just the pleasant ectoplasmic shimmer of a formula you’ve seen a million times before, vanishing almost as soon as the end credits start rolling."

External links

• Ghosted on Apple TV+
• Ghosted at IMDb

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