The film follows a salt-of-the-earth man who thinks he's found his true love after he encounters a mysterious woman. The problem? She seems to have ghosted him while overseas in London. The solution? The man travels to London for a grand romantic gesture. But suddenly, the man soon learns that his new paramour has some bombshell secrets… namely that she's a spy.
The film was released on Apple TV+ on April 21, 2023. No relation to the series of the same name.
Previews: Trailer
Ghosted includes examples of the following:
- Action Girl: Sadie is a highly competent CIA covert agent who shows her skills using martial arts and guns, very much outmatching Cole (at first especially).
- Action Survivor: Cole is a civilian with zero field experience and mostly relies on the much more competent Sadie at first, but he gradually becomes better at keeping up with her and getting out of situations. By the showdown in the restaurant, he manages to put up a decent fight against Wagner and kill him.
- Actor Allusion:
- Cole's sister says, when he comes back from his one-night stand with Sadie, "He just got back from having sex with a stranger, not fighting the Germans."
- Anthony Mackie's bounty hunter proclaims himself to be the "Grandson of Sam".
- Actually Pretty Funny: Leveque finds it quite amusing when Sadie calls Wagner an idiot to his face.
- Advertising by Association: "From the brains behind Deadpool and a producer of Top Gun: Maverick" says the trailer.
- all lowercase letters: The "g" of "ghosted" is lower case in the trailer and on the posters.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Cole's sister Mattie, who likes to make fun of him for his lack of spontaneity and overly clingy behavior in his relationships.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Cole and Sadie have boatloads of this, something that does not go unnoticed by the other characters.
- Big Bad: Leveque, a former French agent turned terrorist leader who is trying to recover Aztec to sell to a high-profile buyer.
- Black-Tie Infiltration: The climax is set in a fancy high-class revolving restaurant where Cole and Sadie try to broker a deal for Aztec with Leveque under the claim that they're going to sell the passcode to him; in reality, this is all a set-up by the CIA. However, Leveque ends up getting wind of the plan and kills the CIA agents monitoring Cole, leading to him and Sadie having to come up with a new and far riskier plan on the spot of selling the passcode to Leveque's buyer for $10 million and then using the money to put a bounty on Leveque's head.
- Body Horror: Played for laughs. Jonas spends most of his brief appearance talking about how he's lost various body parts over the years, including his eye, one of his ears, and his penis. He's remarkably sanguine about it and says that each loss made him a better man.
- Bottomless Magazines: Both Sadie and Cole are rarely ever seen reloading.
- Bounty Hunter: Three are sent after Cole and Sadie, with each being killed in succession by another in comical ways. Sadie then pretends she's one who's giving Cole to Leveque in return for the reward later.
- The Cameo:
- The three bounty hunters trying to collect the price on Cole's head who all get killed in rapid succession by each other are played by Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, and John Cho.
- Patti, the CIA desk worker who administers Cole and Sadie's lie detector test, is played by Tiya Sircar.
- Ryan Reynolds has a cameo as Jonas, a bounty hunter who used to date Sadie and apparently lost an eye because of her. He's still friendly with her, however, but ends up losing his hearing in one of his ears after she fires a gun close to it to kill a nearby henchman.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- In his first scene, Cole is established to have put digital trackers on some of his things so he won't lose them. After he accidentally leaves his inhaler in Sadie's purse before racing her up the Exorcist steps, he uses the tracker he has on it to find her location.
- Cole uses one of the cacti he bought for Sadie to injure and then kill a henchman.
- The houseplant that Elena owned before she was killed by Sadie, mentioned by her early on, is the passcode to the Aztec program.
- After having sex with Sadie, Cole takes a selfie of them in bed while she's sleeping. This ends up blowing Sadie's attempt to pose as a bounty hunter who has "captured" Cole to get onboard Wagner's plane, as Wagner finds the picture while searching Cole's phone and realizes that he's being deceived.
- Chekhov's Skill: Cole is a farmer with an interest in the way that agriculture has developed in different cultures around the world, which comes in handy several times. He uses his knowledge of healing herbs to make an ointment for Sadie after she gets stabbed during the plane fight, and is able to identify the passcode as being the genetic sequence of amaranth, as it was traditionally used by the Aztecs, which is also the name of the MacGuffin.
- Cold Ham: Leveque delivers bombastic lines and monologues in a coldly serious and soft-spoken manner, and he doles out a lot of threats with Tranquil Fury.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Sadie came with her mother on a raft from their home country to the US, braving many dangers. Then her mother died in her childhood. Cole is quite sympathetic at hearing this.
- Death by Irony: Right after "God" the bounty hunter says his senses are honed to great heights, he gets run over by the "Grandson of Sam" in a car that he'd not seen or heard coming.
- Disney Villain Death: Leveque, after Sadie shoots a pillar which causes it to crush him and fall out a window.
- Distressed Dude: Cole is kidnapped by arms dealers and Sadie has come rescue him.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The end of the trailer as a comedic scene where Sadie asks Cole if he trusts her before punching him.
- Dramatic Unmask: Used to establish Sadie's real profession. Just as the torturer is about to start interrogating Cole by exposing him to an Asian giant hornet, a masked Sadie blows down a door in the cave and guns down the torturer and his bodyguards. After taking a picture of the torturer's corpse to confirm the kill, she begins undoing Cole's restraints.Sadie: Can you walk?
Cole: What?
Sadie: [removes her hat and mask] Can you walk, Cole?
Cole: [shocked] ...Sadie?
[Sadie notices the hornet buzzing around Cole's ear and slaps him in that part of the face to scare it off]
Sadie: Head down, mouth closed, and follow me, before anyone sounds the alarm. [alarm goes off] - The Dragon: Wagner is Leveque's chief henchman. He also fights with Cole in the climax.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Leveque pulls up Cole's history with the intelligence community, he's listed as having no connections to any intelligence agency. For some reason, it also pulls up Target's customer database, where he's mentioned to be a frequent shopper with 2,700 rewards points.
- A God Am I: The last bounty hunter calls himself "God" after Sadie and Cole ask what his name is, due to saying he's the best in the world.
- Gory Discretion Shot: During the final battle, Cole throws Wagner into gears, and the grinding happens off-screen.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Cole going to London to see Sadie was meant to be one, even though he only met her once. It ends up going horribly wrong because he ends up walking into a trap that was set for her by the bad guys she's pursuing.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Sadie wears a black party dress while wielding a shotgun for the climactic fight in the revolving restaurant.
- Mexican Standoff: The climax starts with one of these between the many bounty hunters hidden in the restaurant, which causes the diners to flee before it eventually erupts into a Blast Out.
- Mistaken for Spies: Upon arrival in London, Cole finds himself getting ambushed and abducted by hired men who think that he's a legendary spy called "the Taxman". When Sadie shows up and guns down Cole's captors as they're preparing to torture him with insects, he comes to realize that she is the actual Taxman.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Despite being the Big Bad and a former agent himself, Leveque prefers to let his lackeys do much of the actual fighting while he tries to get Aztec, though he does prove capable of defending himself when he fights against Sadie in the climax.
- Product Placement: Naturally for an Apple TV+ movie, Cole is seen using an iPhone and AirTags, while Sadie is shown using a car equipped with Apple CarPlay.
- Running Gag: Most conversations between Cole and Sadie eventually devolve into them arguing, much to the confusion of everyone else, who tell them to just Get a Room!.
- Shout-Out: While on their first date, Cole brings Sadie by the staircase from The Exorcist, and is astounded that Sadie has never watched that movie, which he insists is one of the scariest films ever made, much to her amusement. Looking at the texts he sends to her also shows that he's a fan of Cast Away, which he also recommends.
- Spy Fiction: Both "Martini" (there's a romance and a female agent Kicking Ass in All Her Finery) and "Bathtub Gin Flavored" (heavy involvement of a civilian, Cole Turner).
- Start of Darkness: Leveque, a former French secret agent, relates to Cole that nearly dying near Kabul made him realize how he'd given all he had to his country without gaining anything for himself. The realization convinced him to become a criminal, selling weapons of mass destruction on the black market for profit. Cole, pretending he's the Taxman, claims later that Leveque's story inspired his own turn to crime and selling Aztec (a WMD).
- Stock Scream: The henchman that Cole stabs in the face with the potted cactus emits a Wilhelm scream as Cole subsequently kicks him out of the bus.
- Trojan Prisoner: Upon finding out that Cole's would-be torturer wanted to know if he had the password to unlock the briefcase carrying Aztec, Sadie comes up with a new plan to get to Aztec. She delivers Cole tied up and gagged to Leveque, claiming to be a bounty hunter who caught the "Taxman". She then insists on being paid in cash rather than through electronic wire transfer, prompting Leveque to have his henchman Wagner take the two aboard a private jet along with the Aztec briefcase. Her plan is that once they land, they will knock out Wagner and his bodyguards, then flee with Aztec. Unfortunately, her ruse is discovered when Wagner scrolls through Cole's phone and finds a selfie he took of himself and Sadie in bed after they had sex. Consequently, Sadie and Cole are forced to fight off Wagner and the bodyguards, then take the briefcase and escape by jumping out of the plane.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gender-flipped; Cole becomes enraged after Sadie gets stabbed during the plane fight, and takes down two henchmen to save her.
- You Have Failed Me: Leveque pours ants (apparently carnivorous) onto an injured henchman for allowing Cole and Sophie to escape. The camera cuts away, but the screaming lets us know what they're doing to him.
