“Ghosted” is a new action-adventure film with the theme of love and romance at its center, starring popular actors like Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, and Adrien Brody. The story essentially follows two characters with contrasting personalities, Cole and Sadie, who have a great first date before suddenly getting embroiled in an international mission to save the world. The premise and title of the film are based on Sadie’s initial avoidance of Cole, which is termed ghosting in the digital age, and the two then trying to mend their relationship. Although there is nothing exceptional to find in “Ghosted,” and the cultural representation is naively superficial when the plot goes through international locations, it is watchable as a mindless entertainer.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Ghosted’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
“Ghosted” begins with Sadie Rhodes, a busy professional, taking some time with her own thoughts as she drives through the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It is immediately clear that the woman does not get much time like this, and her biggest worry is that she will end up being alone and lonely in life. Sadie talks more about this on a phone call with her therapist, saying that the recent death of a colleague who was the same age as her has got her thinking about her own life. The therapist’s advice is to not end up doing anything big or sudden in her life out of these worries, and Sadie has no such plans either. The most she can think of is buying a houseplant to keep her company, and for this, she stops at a local organic market in Washington, D.C. It is here that she first meets Cole Turner, a young farmer who is at the market to sell his own goods and happens to be watching over a neighboring plant stall at the time. Cole and Sadie’s first interaction is rather negative, as the man is angry at the fact that she is about to buy a plant, which she would probably have no time to care for. It is on the insistence of others that Cole realizes that he and Sadie share some sort of intense sexual spark, and he decides to give it a chance.
Unlike Sadie, Cole is not lonely in his life, as he is very close with his parents and sister, with whom he still stays at their farmhouse. But the man has had no luck finding a partner in life, owing to the fact that he gets extremely clingy and attached to any woman he goes out with. Both Cole and Sadie feel an attraction towards each other, and the woman agrees to go on a date with Cole. Beyond either of their expectations, their date stretches over the entire day and even the night, as the two love each other’s company, and it is even difficult to let go the next morning. Taking lessons from his earlier experiences in life, Cole decides to act less clingy with Sadie but still sends her an enormous number of text messages over a short span of days. There is no reply from Sadie’s end, though, making it clear that the woman is now ghosting Cole. Through a coincidence, Cole now learns that Sadie is actually in London at the time, and unable to stay away from his feelings, he decides to give Sadie a surprise visit in the U.K. Cole follows through with his plan, but little does he know that Sadie is not actually an art curator like she told him but is actually an international spy working for the CIA.
How Is Cole The One Taken By Surprise In London?
After landing in the U.K. and taking an exorbitantly expensive cab ride to London’s Tower Bridge, Cole starts looking for the woman he was surely falling in love with. During their date, he had accidentally left his inhaler inside Sadie’s bag, and owing to his forgetful nature, Cole had a tracker fixed to it. This is how he tries to track down Sadie’s location: by tracking the location of the inhaler on his phone, but he is unable to see the woman anywhere. Instead, Cole is suddenly surrounded by a group of mean-looking men, and although he tries to walk away from the situation, the men sedate him and throw him into a van with his face covered.
When Cole finally wakes up a few hours later, he finds himself tied to a chair inside an underground room that is filled with dangerous insects and the men who had kidnapped him. The apparent leader of the group, a man named Borislov, addresses Cole as “the Taxman” and starts interrogating him about some codes. Shocked and panicked by the entire situation, which he realizes to be extremely dangerous, Cole claims that the gang has mistaken him for someone else, but his words are not taken seriously. Borislov continues to use force against him to spill out the information he wants and then even prepares to torture Cole with some of the toxic insects. Right at this time, though, a masked woman barges into the room and shoots everyone dead. She quickly unmasks herself to reveal that she is Sadie, and the woman then rescues Cole out of the underground facility, shooting through groups of armed men.
Sadie reveals that she is not actually an art curator but a CIA spy on an international mission. She also reveals that she had indeed been ghosting Cole because his constant texts had made Sadie realize how clingy he was, contrary to what he had previously stated about himself. However, Sadie also admits that she did eventually decide to contact Cole when she would return to the USA after her mission, but now there was clearly no need for it. When the two come out into the open, they find themselves in the high altitudes of the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, and they have to navigate through the dangerous mountainous roads in a bus, all while being chased by the militant group.
Who Was The Taxman? Why Was Everyone Looking For The Taxman?
“Ghosted” does not spend too much time revealing who The Taxman is, as it is quite evident that it is Sadie Rhodes herself. In her professional field, Sadie had created an air of mystery and suspense around her character, as her real identity was not known to anyone but her CIA operatives, and she was instead known as The Taxman by her enemies and rival spies. The Taxman had become notoriously famous for being efficient and ruthless in her missions, and in reality, Sadie is indeed a cold-blooded killer who does not mind taking the lives of people she considers evil. In fact, the colleague that Sadie mourns the death of at the beginning of the film was a woman named Elena, who was a rival spy of hers. It was actually Sadie who had killed Elena, as the CIA could no longer trust the woman and had therefore sent The Taxman to kill her off.
The entire plan in the works that pose a great threat to world safety is fully revealed when Sadie and Cole reach the Pakistani city of Mingora. Here Sadie meets with a fellow spy and old lover named Marco, who fills them in on what has been happening. A devastating biochemical weapon called Aztec had been created by some scientists, but this weapon had then been stolen by a dangerous group of criminals. The Aztec bioweapon is apparently powerful enough to destroy the entire Eastern Seaboard in the USA in a matter of seconds, and just like common sense repeated in innumerable American films, a threat to America automatically means a threat to the entire world. This group of criminals is headed by an ex-French spy named Leveque, who intends to sell off the bioweapon to a powerful Asian buyer named Utami.
But despite having the Aztec in his hands, Leveque is unable to sell it because the weapon is placed inside a heavily protective case that requires a certain code to be opened. Both the CIA and the criminals are aware that this code is actually a long sequence of numbers based on the genetic sequence of something. Without this code, the Aztec would detonate in the hands of whoever tried to force it open, meaning that the code was of utmost importance. Sometime earlier, only one individual, a spy, had been able to decipher the code to the Aztec case, and this happened to be Elena. Since Sadie, or The Taxman, had killed Elena, Leveque and his men assume that The Taxman must have the code. This was the reason why he had sent men to track Sadie in London as well, during the same time when Cole was there. But Cole’s suspicious behavior in trying to look for someone made the criminals believe that he was The Taxman and kidnap him. At present, Leveque still believes that it is Cole who is the master spy, and he announces a hit on Cole, which leads to a number of professional hitmen trying to apprehend Cole and Sadie at Mingora. The two manage to survive these attacks as well, but Sadie then reveals that she has no idea what the code of the Aztec case is, and the only reason she has come to Pakistan is to somehow rescue the stolen Aztec bioweapon. Saving Cole had been only her second priority, but she was still unable to get hold of the Aztec yet.
What Is The Code Of The Aztec Case?
After realizing that she can use Cole as bait to secure the Aztec weapon, Sadie sedates the man and takes him to meet with Leveque. She poses as a hitman who has captured the target, The Taxman, and Leveque at once demands the secret code. At this time, Leveque also reveals how he used to be a highly distinguished spy for the French secret service before one day realizing that his own agency had stopped caring about him. It was then that Leveque decided to turn his life around by doing all the spy work for his own benefit, and the man-made had no choices based on morals anymore. With no concern for whether his clients were some sort of government or corrupt private militia, Leveque started working with anyone who would pay him the most money. At present, Leveque agrees to pay Sadie only when Cole reveals the code, and it is tried on the safe, and in order to test this out, he sends Sadie and Cole, along with a few of his henchmen, on a private plane. The reason Leveque does not accompany them is that the wrong code would blow up the case and the entire plane and the man does not want to take that risk.
Sadie makes use of this situation to steal the Aztec back, and she and Cole have to jump out of the plane with a single parachute. After surviving the fall and a day or two on an isolated island, the two are once more pursued by Leveque’s men, who take the Aztec once again. Although they plan on killing Cole and Sadie, the two are saved by personnel sent by the CIA, with whom Sadie had secretly shared her location. Back in the United States, an FBI operative tries to convince Cole not to trust Sadie, for she is just a merciless spy who has gone rogue. However, it is at this very instant that Cole cracks the code of the Aztec case based on a clue he finds in the photographs of Elena’s house. Elena used to keep a single plant in her house—a crop called amaranth, which would often be used in sacred rituals by the Aztec people. Elena had actually taken this plant from a scientist named Horvath, who had worked on the creation of the Aztec bioweapon, and the man was known to be severely obsessed with the practice of human sacrifice performed by the Aztec people.
Cole identifies the plant and its link to the Aztec civilization based on his profound interest in agricultural practices in various societies throughout time, a subject on which he had even started to write a book. Based on these clues, Cole deduces that the genetic sequence of the amaranth crop would be the passcode required to open the Aztec bioweapon case. With the CIA ready to believe in his deduction, the next challenge is to bring back the bioweapon itself. In order to do this, a plan is made in which Cole would contact Leveque while still posing as The Taxman and offer to make a deal with him by giving him the code in exchange for money. After listening to the offer and learning that the first digit of the code suggested by Cole turned out to be correct, Leveque agreed to the deal and scheduled a meeting with Cole in the USA.
‘Ghosted’ Ending Explained – Did Cole And Sadie Save The World And Their Romance?
The CIA’s initial plan is to send Cole into the revolving restaurant where the meeting is supposed to take place, with him pretending to be the Taxman, and then send operatives in to arrest Leveque and retrieve the Aztec. Although Cole is vehemently against such a plan, the CIA operatives convince him that Leveque needs to be brought down or else the man will go hurting Cole’s family members. On the other side, Sadie is suspended from her duty, and a detailed investigation into her decision to go rogue is planned for the future.
At the restaurant, things swiftly go downhill for the CIA as the three operatives supposed to keep track of Cole are killed off by Leveque’s men before they enter the building. Now completely alone to keep himself safe while also trying to steal the dangerous bioweapon, Cole desperately wishes for his beloved Sadie to appear and save the situation. Sadie, too, had by now started to genuinely fall in love with Cole, and she finally reached the restaurant just in time, along with the genetic code. Sadie finally reveals herself as the real Taxman and then makes a direct offer to the Asian buyer, Utami, saying that she would give him the Aztec bioweapon for half the price that Leveque was demanding. She then opens up the case using the code to prove that she is not lying, and all hell breaks loose.
As expected, Leveque lashes out, and Sadie reveals that she has placed a large bounty on the Frenchman’s head, and numerous hitmen soon start a shootout inside the restaurant, trying to protect each side and earn the money they were offering. A greater series of action sequences follow, by the end of which Sadie is left pinned down by Leveque, and Cole lunges on him to save his girlfriend. By now, the two had already had moments where they worked together, and finally, they now manage to kill Leveque while also saving the crucial Aztec bioweapon. In the end, Cole and Sadie indeed succeed in not just saving the world but also their own romance. Both Cole and Sadie had their individual problems, the former being too clingy and attached, while the latter was intentionally aloof because of her fear of getting hurt in love. But ultimately, it is not something that the two cannot work out together, and Cole and Sadie decide to start a relationship.
“Ghosted” ends with a scene from three months after the previous events, in which Sadie drives to a fancy location where Cole has been waiting for her. The two are evidently on a date night, but Sadie interestingly brings a target kept hostage in the boot of her car, signifying that no matter how busy her professional life is, she is keen on making time for her romantic life with Cole, who is now pursuing his educational interests once more.
