Film Review: The Amateur

The Amateur
Director: James Hawes
Hutch Parker Entertainment
In Theaters: 04.11.25

Every film fan has at least one pet genre that they are irresistibly drawn to, and the espionage thriller has been one of my top cinematic comfort foods for decades. The Amateur may be closer to a tasty burger than haute cuisine, but apart from one major shortcoming, for me, it nicely satisfied an urgent craving.

CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller (Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody) is an introverted tech nerd who lives a quiet, isolated existence working in a basement office at Langley obsessing over files and puzzles — until his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Superman) is killed in a London terrorist attack. When his superiors decline to act, Charlie uncovers encrypted files pointing to a series of rogue operations tied to civilian deaths. Realizing the agency may be hiding the truth, he used this leverage to blackmail his bosses into giving him some field training in weapons, explosives and hand to hand combat, all under the tutelage of veteran operative Robert “Hendo” Henderson (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix). Hendo makes it abundantly clear that he doesn’t believe that Heller has what it takes to survive in the field, or to pull the trigger when the moment comes, encouraging him to recognize his limitations and back down from his quest, but of course, we wouldn’t have a movie if Heller took that advice. Lacking the skills of a traditional agent but armed with a brilliant mind and an insider’s knowledge of systems and surveillance, Heller goes rogue, traveling the globe to bring the killers to justice and exact his own methodical brand of retribution. Using intelligence as his weapon, he stays one step ahead of those who want to silence him, determined to find the people who took his wife from him and make them feel his pain.

The Amateur is the kind of movie that does a far better job of telling you that it’s protagonist is cunningly brilliant than it does at showing it, and the sequences wherein Heller is carrying out his master plan range from delectably far fetched fun to unintentionally hilarious (a bit involving breaking into an allergy studies clinic with a bag full of pollen to use as a torture device drew chortles rather than cheers).Other sequences are far more successful, the best being based around Heller cornering one of his targets in an elevated swimming pool and taking a rather inventive approach to pressuring him to give up his boss’s location. The film is silly to the point of being borderline preposterous, but it moves swiftly and benefits greatly from moody and elegant cinematography of one of the best shooters in the business, Martin Ruhe (The American, The Keeping Room, The Boys in the Boat). Ruhe gives the film a dark ambience and depth of field that looks absolutely stunning, especially in IMAX, and editor Jonathan Amos (Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) helps director James Hawes (One Life) keep his sophomore theatrical feature nice and tight. Composer Volker Bertelman (All Quiet on the Western Front) channels the attitude of John Powell’s Bourne scores to great effect while bringing some of his own unique touches, and there’s more than enough skill here to mask the shortcomings of a mediocre screenplay, or at least there would be if one of the films most important players was up the task.

I’m not a Bohemian Rhapsody fan, and was hardly one of those cheering “AAAAA-O!” when Malek picked up his Oscar for Best Performance by a Lead Actor Wearing Chiclets as teeth. Still, while I’ve never believed his Oscar was deserved, I’ve tried hard to warm up to Malek as a screen presence, and I find him to be effective in supporting roles, and praised his stellar performance in Oppenhiemer. Still, I find him to be a limited actor who is best suited to supporting roles simply because he has such a distant quality to him that he’s unable to emotionally engage me. The Bourne films and Daniel Craig’s Bond took us to heights of adventure now because the characters were larger than life, but because Craig and Matt Damon gave us a window into their protagonists and let us come along on the journey, seeing it through their eyes. I was completely unable to do that with Malek’s stilted portrayal of Charlie Heller and, unfortunately, in moments of high emotion, Malek tends to fall back on two primary facial expressions: 1. I feel as though I am about to have a very uncomfortable bowel movement, and 2. I’ve just had an extremely uncomfortable bowel movement. While I believed that Heller was brilliant, I felt his heart or his pain, as if I’m not feeling invested in the loss of a woman portrayed by the endlessly relatable, vivacious and stunning Brosnahan, there’s a problem.

The Amateur is enough fun that as a spy movie geek, I can see myself watching it multiple times, and it provided a desperately needed fix, fueled by Ruhe’s breathtaking work. Despite its inherent silliness and lack of believability, I think there was potential for a minor franchise here, but even if Heller isn’t a charismatic star quality kind of guy. We needed an Eddie Redmayne or a similar actor who is able to play distant while allow us to get close to the character. I’m still giving the movie a soft recommendation for genre fans, but falls decidedly short of being any kind of standout, and most of that comes down to a lead who simply wasn’t a good fit. —Patrick Gibbs

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