Delayed Reaction: Ghosted

Premise: After a great first date, a man finds out the woman who ghosted him is actually a secret agent. And now he's mixed up in her latest job.

Can we just keep Chris Evans and Ana de Armas away from streaming productions for a little while? I haven't even seen de Armas on a movie screen since No Time To Die. Short of cameos or voice-work, the last time I saw Evans in a theater was Knives Out. I don't know how many times I can say it, but there's something different about a movie made for theaters. Notice how the first movie Evans and de Armas did together, Knives Out, was a beloved hit. The next one, the incredibly expensive The Gray Man, was widely panned, mostly for feeling generic. I can't prove it, but if that movie would've been made with theatrical in mind rather than Netflix streaming, it would've been made differently and played differently.

Ghosted is arguably even more generic. And I don't like saying that. I tend to be a fan of movies like this (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, True Lies). I like both leads a lot. They are great for an action movie and their combative relationship in Knives Out makes me think that could be tweaked for romantic chemistry. It just doesn't work in Ghosted though, and most of it has to do with Evans. De Armas since Knives Out has become one of Hollywood's go-to badass women, so she fits perfectly into this superspy role. Evans has proven he has two successful modes. The majority of his career has been as one of the great assholes (of both the lovable and detestable variety). Single-handedly because of Captain America, he's also great at entirely earnest roles. In both cases though, he's in at least what he perceives to be high status. Ghosted has the weird task of convincing the audience that Evans is a somewhat pathetic everyman. It's reductive to say he's too handsome to be an everyman. Many, many actors have done it. Rather, Evans hasn't figured it out yet, and it really shows in this.

The best way I can describe it is this. I remember during his press tour for Lightyear, Evans took a couple promo shots at Disney Land. Shortly after those we released, he got on his Instagram to point out that some people thought he was photoshopped into the pictures because his pose was exactly the same in both. Evans assured everyone that the photos were real, and he has to thank his impeccable posture for the confusion. That is not the story of someone ready to play an average dude.

That is the core issue of the movie that derails so much of the rest of it. The weird cameos don't help though. I know the idea of having Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Ryan Reynolds, and Jon Cho pop up briefly was to be a fun wink to the audience. They ended up having the opposite effect. It felt like the movie begging the audience to associate this with how much they enjoyed Evans in the Marvel movies. And the Reynolds cameo was particularly bizarre. It was so pointless to everything else happening at that point in the movie. The fact that it wasn't cut out played into a perception of desperate star-chasing in the movie: the idea that the best thing this movie could do was fit another big name into the credits and not worry screenplay, editing, or general flow of the movie.

I've gone on about this movie long enough. It's a major case of "I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed." While it's a harmless movie, it so easy to find similar movies that are just plain better.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend