phantom exam

Judging by mid-level Hollywood thrillers, if you meet an attractive person and get along well, there’s a 73% chance they’ll turn into a super spy in a desperate battle to the death to stop someone. big bomb. As a result, there’s little new in the premise of Dexter Fletcher’s latest film, so it goes up or down depending on the chemistry of its leads. Unfortunately, what’s on offer here is just a ghost of his potential.

One problem with this boy-meets-girl, girl-who-turns-out-to-be-a-spy, boy-who-gets-tangled-up-in-an-international-conspiracy is that Chris Evans seems fundamentally wrong. All credit for trying to go against type as a home farmer inspired to make a grand romantic gesture after meeting Ana de Armas’ Sadie, who feels reasonable even in her straw wig, but with the best will in the world. it’s hard to believe him as a regular guy who’s just plain unlucky in love, even given Hollywood’s usual disbelief about what the average person looks like. There’s too much bravado lurking beneath him to be so out of reach for him, and not enough flesh to the character as he’s presented to make up for his lack of skill.

That said, the old man knives out the co-stars are clearly comfortable together and have some funny dialogue between fights when they find themselves on the run from an arms dealer (Adrien Brody with a goofy accent). Its romantic scenes suggest it could have worked better as a romantic comedy, maybe a talk show like Evans. Before leaving. Perhaps then their respective characters could have been fleshed out and become slightly three-dimensional. Unfortunately, we are not so lucky, and soon people are being herded across international borders without so much as a wink at passport control, while others are being killed with gleeful abandon.

De Armas is a compelling action hero, flipping Evans and shooting him while his jaw drops, but their romantic and professional destinies aren’t quite as intertwined as they are in the best of the genre. : she says she will get in trouble. . to get it, but the film doesn’t really bet on that, or even the mission itself. Worse, Fletcher fails to maintain a tone, at times going from relatively straightforward action comedy to complete farce, as in a scene involving bounty hunters and a very bizarre joke about Sadie’s exes. .

So our heroes chase and gun around the world, with Fletcher and DF Salvatore Totino hosting a series of high-profile and ridiculous encounters, but none of it seems to matter much. He’s just another super spy with just another deadly MacGuffin. The leads are too charismatic to make it seem impossible to watch, but there’s basically no reason to root for these two to be together. Both are indescribably beautiful; They will find someone else. What are we interested in?