Disney / Buena Vista
The Amateur is based on a 1981 spy novel, but it feels like the elevator pitch was “What if pitch was “What if Mr. Robot was John Wick?
The film features a performance from star/producer Rami Malek as a CIA analyst that feels like an extension of his breakthrough work on the 2015 drama, is directed by James Hawes, a veteran of BBC television who is well versed in desaturated menace from men in suits, and features talented actors like Laurence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal in roles they could do in their sleep by this point.
Malak plays Charlie Heller, an analyst working out of Langley and devoted husband to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan, who is excellent in what amounts to an extended cameo).
Charlie is played as a high functioning autistic by Malek and the film at least implies that his connection to his wife is his sole emotional point of contact with the world writ large.
When Sarah is killed in a terrorist attack while on a business trip to London, Charlie is horrified when his superior, Director Moore (Holt McCallany) refuses to act on information Charlie produces about the identity of the terrorists. Charlie blackmails Moore with classified documents that suggest he ordered false flag drone strikes on American allies in the Middle East and blackmails him into sending Charlie to “the Farm” where he can receive the CIA training for special agents that will allow him to take matters into his own hands.
The Amateur is based on a 1981 spy novel but it feels like the elevator pitch was “What if Mr. Robot was John Wick?” The film features a performance from star/producer Rami Malek as a CIA analyst that feels like an extension of his breakthrough work on the 2015 drama, is directed by a veteran of BBC television who is well versed in desaturated menace from men in suits, and features talented actors like Laurence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal in roles they could do in their sleep by this point.
Colonel Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) is assigned to the task of training Charlie and he recognizes in Charlie both a drive for justice and a real aversion to firearms. What follows are a number of set pieces where Charlie confronts the cell that killed his wife, one member at a time, cannot bring himself to shoot them but instead uses his memory and analysis skills to contrive scenarios where the criminals are forced to comply under deadly duress.
I admire The Amateur for its attempt to update a Cold War potboiler and use its construction to execute a more thoughtful kind of revenge thriller. Unfortunately it falls into many of the traps that action films about geniuses tend to when they’re not written with care. Charlie’s plans rely more on convenience and contrivance than genuine analytical skill. The Marseille set piece includes an excellent fight and high suspense but it begins with Charlie’s target entering an air tight booth with no safety latch and ends with her hit by a van before she can tell anything useful. Nothing feels earned when things just happen in films like this.
As I alluded to earlier Malek and the supporting cast are great, but then they’d have to be given how little is being asked of them. Malek is playing a neurodivergent genius on a mission, Fishburne a world weary mentor, Berenthal a sly and morally dubious man of action. Of course everyone is going to hit their marks– they’ve been hitting these marks for their entire careers.
The Amateur is not a horrible movie but it’s completely safe: every set up and pay off can be seen a mile away, every scene seems shot for speed and not for art, the score is generic, the film looks like British television. Spy thrillers are a wonderful opportunity to get into the heads of people who live outside conventional morality to earn a living– Soderbergh’s recent Black Bag puts the audience through an absolute ordeal with a plot that could easily be adapted to the stage for how little action it contains because it takes seriously the implications of living on the edge. The Amateur is a film where a computer analyst finds out his boss is killing people with government equipment on his own accord and then just goes into his office and tells him he knows. There’s nothing below the surface, demanding you watch it again to see what you’ve missed.
A spy film without intrigue is just a travelogue, and The Amateur is a collection of dull looking European locales.
A missed opportunity.
Extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
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