Ghosted (2023)

Ghosted opens at a Washington farmers' market, where Cole, an agricultural author of gentle disposition, meets Sadie, a woman who travels often. They share a long first date. He texts. She does not reply. He flies to London to surprise her and is promptly abducted to Pakistan by arms dealers who mistake him for a legendary CIA operative known as the Taxman. Sadie, it turns out, is the Taxman. This is the sort of film where a man's asthma inhaler carries a tracking device and nobody in the screenplay thinks to mention it until the plot requires it.

The cultural accounting here is thin but not empty. The cast is diverse in the manner of a modern studio production, with Ana de Armas, Mike Moh, Marwan Kenzari and Anna Deavere Smith appearing in roles that never remark on their own composition. De Armas does the heavy lifting as a competent operative who outclasses her romantic partner in every physical confrontation, though the film treats this as a genre convention instead of an argument. Nothing is being asserted. The villains are arms dealers and bounty hunters, and the film declines to notice that they are also businessmen. There is no sermon waiting at the end, which in this case counts as a mercy.

The result is a listless object assembled from borrowed parts, competent in its chases and inert in its romance. Chris Evans works hard. Ana de Armas works harder. The revolving restaurant climax spins faster and faster while two attractive people cling to each other, which is roughly the film's entire thesis about love, and also about streaming. It became the most-watched debut in Apple TV+ history, a fact that says more about the platform than about the film. There is nothing offensive here, and nothing to argue with. It is a Tuesday night, rendered at feature length, and it vanishes before the credits finish. The classification ledger stays largely blank, and the film seems content with that outcome. So are we.

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