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Ah, Ana de Armas. She dropped into Daniel Craig's James Bond farewell No Time to Die and immediately made everything much more fun, as well as making clear to everyone that she was more than capable of taking out baddies with a machine gun.
"Give that woman a Bond spin-off!" cried many. No Bond spin-offs have been forthcoming. But instead, there's the Apple TV+ action-comedy thriller Ghosted to enjoy, which should scratch that particular itch.
De Armas plays the mysterious Sadie. Opposite her is Knives Out co-star Chris Evans, who's shorn of the very lovely cable knit jumper and bad attitude that defined his awful bastard Ransom in Rian Johnson's smash hit whodunnit. Instead he's a goofy romantic by the name of Cole, who bumps into Sadie after some kind of road traffic incident and promptly spends a whirlwind night of wooing with her.
Things start out very lightweight rom-com: she has to go back to London, so he heads over there after her despite not hearing nothing back from Sadie while sending her pages and pages of unread texts. (Pretty creepy Cole! Do not do that!) Anyway after staring at Tower Bridge for a while with his wheelie suitcase – bit of a trek there from Paddington after getting the Heathrow Express, but anyway – he's waiting for her in an alleyway when some bad lads jump him and, in a case of mistaken identity, think he's a spy codenamed 'Taxman'.
It turns out – yep – Sadie is Taxman, and Cole has launched himself into a world which is both extremely dangerous and absolutely not his vibe. Nonetheless, he and Sadie get to spend some quality time together, so that's nice. Before you know it they're on a mission around the world fighting bad lads including Adrien Brody's Leveque (fingers crossed for une outrrrrrrageuse Frarnch accent), Mike Moh's Wagner and Tim Blake Nelson's Borislov.
The vibe is much goofier than Evans' other spy runaround The Gray Man, which makes a lot of sense when you know the script was put together by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick of the Deadpool movies and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who worked on Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Dexter Fletcher, who directed the very good Elton John biopic Rocketman and tried manfully to salvage the not very good Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, is behind the camera. All in all: should be a bit of a lark.
Watch Ghosted for free
Ghosted is available to watch on Apple TV+ from 21 April. Now, if you want Apple TV+ you'll usually have to pay for it – but you can get a seven-day free trial to the service here. You need to be a new subscriber to get that week of free movies and TV, mind you. Don't fancy hanging around? Cancel it within that week and walk away. If not, you'll be on the hook for £6.99.
