Ghosted is a movie that tries to mix action and romantic comedy, and it brings us the story of Sadie (Ana de Armas), a secret agent who feels lost after losing a co-worker and isolates herself for a few days in the mountains to rethink life, arriving there she meets Cole (Chris Evans), a country boy who works with his family at a local fair. The meeting between them is not very friendly at first, with Cole trying to give Sadie a moral lesson, after realizing that she doesn't understand anything about plants, in a kind of Mansplaining, which obviously makes Sadie angry why this guy just sells the plant and minds his own business.
My impression was that the movie tried to make it seem to us that Cole is a sensitive and empathetic guy who cares even for a simple little plant, but it failed miserably because currently he just seemed arrogant and boring to me, the owner of the flower stand tells Cole that she felt that there was tension between him and Sadie, Jesus, what tension, the guy was just being arrogant, and the woman was just finding him unbearable, but amazingly Cole goes after Sadie and after breaking the little plant he was so fond of, he talks to Sadie and ends up convincing her to go out with him.
After they spend the rest of the day and all night together, Cole comes home and starts talking about how amazing Sadie is and how she could be the love of his life, even his own mother thinks he is going too fast when he starts texting Sadie without getting any response, his own sister cites how problematic this behavior is, But Cole's parents support him, after all, as they say he is just being "romantic", so Cole's parents are supposed to be the responsible people here, where is it a romantic gesture to send five hundred messages to a person you have just met and slept with only once.
This is not romantic, this is obsessive to say the least, and after we see him tracking where she is, and we discover that he left his inhaler at Sadie's house, and in this inhaler there is a tracking device, my god how insane is this guy, how do you leave something of your personal use and so important at a stranger's house, this is crazy except if you are a crazy stalker who is looking for a justification to be able to go back to the person's house?
And that's what he does, instead of sending Sadie a message, saying when you can come by and drop my inhaler off at the city fair, or I don't know just buy another inhaler, no, the first thing he does is look excited to have found a way to know where Sadie is, He then calms down and tries to convince himself that she didn't give him a ghosted, after all she must be working and didn't see his messages, this calms his persecuting little heart.
But we find out where Cole's doubtful behavior comes from, when his mother says that he should go after Sadie in London because that would be a romantic gesture, how come the lady understands that her son has just met this woman and doesn't even know who she is, and that him going after her in London will only make him look obsessive and desperate and no romantic? Jesus Christ, what's wrong with these parents, the father also agrees and encourages his son, the only one with common sense is the sister who explains to Cole, the obvious that with this attitude he will only look like a crazy stalker, but why would he listen to the voice of common sense when we have already seen that he doesn't have any and that his parents support him.
Well, in the face of this, he goes to London, where he is captured and ends up getting involved in a plot full of action scenes, and dangers, when he finally meets Sadie again, he finds out that she is a spy, and she confirms that she gave him a Ghosted, and tells him how much he is exaggerated, she now besides having to worry about accomplishing her mission, she also has to worry about saving Cole and sending him safely home.
From then on, it's all cliché, with Sadie getting closer and more involved with Cole, as they go through several dangers together, and in the end he manages to win her, and have his dream happy ending with family lunch, and romantic encounters while she has a guy gagged in her trunk. I think the film shows us with this that Sadie doesn't stop following her profession and Cole, as the ideal and perfect guy that he is, will always support and respect her work.
Ghosted brings together a cast of weight with names like Ryan Reynolds, Sebastian Stan, Antonhy Mackie, John Cho, and of course, the very Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, which guarantee us great action sequences, making the film interesting if the question is action because if we were to consider the romantic part, then unfortunately they missed the hand ugly here, trying to sell us Cole's actions as being the gestures of a romantic and passionate guy, they do a huge disservice because behaviors such as sending a thousand messages to someone you have just met, or even worse going to London when you have only met the person a day before, can be anything but romantic, and the movie that wants us to buy this as romance is problematic to say the least.
And the thing only gets worse when Sadie, an independent woman, strong, FBI agent, accepts to stay with this guy who is at least an emotional dependent, if Sadie were to be intelligent and rational, she was the same other intelligent woman and any intelligent and rational woman, would jump out of a guy like Cole without thinking twice, this movie is an outrage to the intelligence of any woman who is enlightened enough to understand how much Cole's behavior is problematic
In conclusion, Ghosted gets the action precisely right, but skids badly on the romance, showing us how excess testosterone and romantic movies don't mix, written by four men, Rhett Reese, Chris McKenna, Paul Wernick,Erik Sommers, this film has no female screenwriter on the team, which makes it more understandable to understand Cole's decisions and the film's attempt to sell it to us as romantic, and understandable and no less troubling because in the middle of 2023, I would think that men, especially those in the entertainment world, would have already understood how problematic this kind of "romantic gesture" by Cole is.
