GHOSTED (2023)

GHOSTED (2023)

Tagline: You've heard of girl meets guy. Get ready for boy meets spy.

(Action, Comedy, Zero Ghosts Were Harmed During Filming) [PG-13]

What are you, the patron saint of plants?

Wow, that is one of the lamest taglines of all time. Okay, wait, we are doing a review here, so let’s get started. In this one, Cole is just happily living his life and helping his family on their farm. He runs into a girl named Sadie who he immediately starts arguing with and of course, now he’s in love. Because my friends, that is how love works. Don’t question my authority on this. As it turns out Sadie is a secret agent and really likes Cole back, but ghosts him after one date. Cole isn’t about to let her go though, because he’s just got a bunch of money laying around waiting for the day he wants to follow her across the world where she is being hunted by assassins.

First off, one thing I really liked about this movie is the chemistry between Cole and Sadie. Cole is played by Chris Evans (SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD) who has actually been in two other movies with Ana de Armas (KNIVES OUT) who plays Sadie. Both do a really good job in this. The storyline is actually pretty cool and this thing is loaded with cameos including everyone from John Cho (STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS) to Anthony Mackie (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER). 

Aside from the main cast I really liked Cole’s family. His sister Mattie, played by Lizze Broadway. Her attitude reminds me a lot of my sister when she was a teenager. To this point, this is the only role I have ever seen Lizze in. Adrien Brody plays Leveque and for the first half of this movie, it’s probably one of the better Brody roles I’ve seen recently. 

Strong points of this movie also include the fact that we get some awesome action sequences and the soundtrack is really fun. There is a bus scene in particular that is wonderful. This movie got a crap load of hate in the reviews but ended up with a modest 5.8 stars on the IMDb (Internet Movie Database website) which factors in 50,000 reviews and counting. I think it’s better than just above middle of the road. 

If there are any issues it might just be that the storyline for the spy part of the film is pretty cliché. Even with Cole’s unexpected discovery that Sadie is a spy, there isn’t a whole lot that we haven’t seen before making this feel a bit “AI”. What I mean by that, is that it feels like artificial intelligence wrote this and completely didn’t realize that most regular dudes don’t have the dough to travel across the world or buy trackers for their inhalers. Do they? I mean, if that’s a thing? The pacing was pretty good, but I would have trimmed 10 minutes off the opening act. 

None of that means this isn’t a lot of fun. By the way, it wasn’t written by AI. It was partly written by Rhett Reese who was involved in writing ZOMBIELAND and the first 2 DEADPOOL films. I don’t understand some of the hate when you are really just looking at the merits. 

Overall I thought this was pretty fun, but would rather have seen Scarlett Johansson (BLACK WIDOW) in the role of Sadie. Ana de Armas is a good action star, but she’s not on Scarlett’s level with this stuff. Having said that, GHOSTED gets a 5 out of 7 from me. I would definitely watch it again and the cameos added to the film were as cheap as they might have been to some. 

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