Cole (Evans) meets Sadie (de Armas), spends the night with her, but then she disappears. He’s determined to find her, only to discover she’s a CIA secret agent. Thus begin the dangerous adventures Cole never bargained for.
Ana de Armas as Sadie Rhodes in “Ghosted”
The Rise of AI-Generated Content
If the plastic world has won, then artificial intelligence is also close to total enslavement of humanity. The popularity of generated content is growing rapidly. A prime example is “Ghosted,” a new and slightly retouched version of last year’s action movie “The Gray Man.” Netflix is replaced by Apple TV+, the cast is duplicated, the degree of romance is slightly increased, but around it all is the same unimaginative blandness, cemented by a multi-million dollar budget and a soundtrack from Dua Lipa.
A Script That Lacks Self-Respect
However, even AI wouldn’t stoop to such blatant hack work and lose all self-respect, as the screenwriters of “Deadpool,” Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, have done in a burst of creative outpouring. First, viewers are asked to believe in the fictional profession of Chris Evans, whose character Cole is a diligent and tender farmer. He dreams of writing a book, but doesn’t travel at all, lives with his parents and sister, is afraid to break his heart again, and waits for a miracle. He first notices Sadie while buying plants. After an awkward dialogue (there will be plenty of those) and spoken rudeness, Cole apologizes and spends the whole day with Sadie, parting only in the morning. Inspired, he tries to contact his beloved, but to no avail. “You’ve been ghosted,” his sister explains to Cole, who is unfamiliar with modern terms, meaning she has deliberately stopped communicating.
Chris Evans as Cole in “Ghosted”
The audience will still have a few moments to sense something is wrong and get off the ship, but for those who remain, there is, alas, no turning back. The following scenes will amaze the imagination with incomprehensible graphics and action choreography, behind which absolutely empty love relationships will unfold. The mysterious stranger turns out to be a CIA mercenary in the midst of a large-scale mission. Sadie had no plans to deal with the naive Cole. But now the hardworking agronomist is helping to fight off terrorists, because opposites attract even in the most critical situations. Through thorns of digs, easily healed psychological traumas, and misunderstandings, murders, and deadly stunts, two solitudes look at each other and see not an abyss (which is a shame), but only boundless love, which plant fan Cole compares to a prickly cactus.
Ana de Armas as Sadie Rhodes in “Ghosted”
Missed Opportunities and Disappointing Performances
“Ghosted” even has a director, the not-so-bad British director Dexter Fletcher (“Rocketman”), who is being held hostage here: first figuratively, and by the end, literally. Evans, playing against the type of the always confident Captain America, is unable to cope with the tasks assigned to him and the comedic timing, completely destroying any semblance of on-screen chemistry with de Armas. She replaced Scarlett Johansson in the project, who avoided failure. Oscar winner Adrien Brody, with a ridiculous and distracting French accent, plays the antagonist with a weapon of mass destruction. Cameos from Evans’ former Marvel colleagues Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, and Ryan Reynolds are sure to pop up; all three look like an expected misunderstanding. The film is also surprisingly scarce on locations: for the homebody Cole, who finds himself in the atypical role of an international agent, you crave a much more colorful odyssey around the world, but you get pieces of London and Pakistan, which Western filmmakers still consider something exotic and authentic.
A Genre Film That Leaves You Unsatisfied
As a result, “Ghosted” will leave both fans and casual observers of the genre hungry. Despite the “star” presence, this meaningless creation of streaming signals not an acute crisis of ideas, but a drought that even omnipotent robots will not be able to prevent.