InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16

FILM REVIEWS
Theoretically, this isn’t an awful setup. After all, horny men falling
into spy hijinks is a Hitchcock staple. Even the undesirability of
the two leads shouldn’t be much of a problem: yes, Cole behaves
like a needy, desperate creep and Sadie kills dozens of men
without a second thought, but a good rom-com can make easy
work of overlooking the most tragic character flaws. The magic
of the genre is often in how sexual tension and charm overcome
the irrationality of a potential relationship and its circumstances.
Evidently, the filmmaker and his leads are simply not up to that
task. Fletcher directs with a listlessness befitting
cinematographer Salvatore Totino’s flat images, composing his
shots without creativity or even seemingly any attempt at style.
Evans and De Armas, in return, meet the director and the
material at that level — these are objectively sexy people who
have proven charming in the past, but it’s impossible to find
chemistry in their sleepy performances. Evans’ work here, which
consists of half-assed charming smiles and tossed-off quips,
makes the case that if Marvel hasn’t outright destroyed cinema, it
has at least drained the actor of his remaining personality and
energy. De Armas, meanwhile, never seems comfortable in her
role, even as she plays her third spy character in the past three
years. She’s as lackluster with the film’s dialogue as she is with
its action scenes, a far, far cry from her movie-stealing
performance in No Time to Die. And were it not for the film’s third
parties loudly and constantly pointing it out, the sexual tension
supposedly bubbling beneath their bickering would go completely
unnoticed.
On the other hand, half of the time Ghosted doesn’t even seem
interested in the rom or com of the romantic comedy it’s failing
to sell, and instead gets too wrapped up in its lame spy thriller
MacGuffin hunt. In fact, there’s far more action in the film than
there is sex or kissing, and it’s all somehow even less exciting
than the romance, as many of these setpieces are just blurs of
CGI and stunt doubles set to a series of needle drops
indistinguishable from the playlist at a middle school dance. One
extended car chase sequence is set to “My Sharona,” while, for
some reason, the climactic shootout makes use of the egregious
“Uptown Funk.” But the worst offender is a brawl on an airplane
set to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” Interesting, because
Pitchfork once reviewed a Jet album with nothing except a video
of a chimp pissing in its own mouth. Ghosted inspires roughly the
same enthusiasm. — CHRIS MELLO
DIRECTOR: Dexter Fletcher; CAST: Chris Evans, Ana de Armas,
Adrien Brody, Mike Moh; DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+; STREAMING:
April 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 56 min.
PLAN 75
Chie Hayakawa
As its title would have it, Plan 75 has a broad purview over the
implementation and implications of its alternate, near-future. In
this future, set in Japan, citizens 75 years and above are not only
permitted, but actively encouraged to opt for euthenasia as a
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