Review: "The Amateur"
- Drew Moniot
- Apr 9
- 4 min read
The Amateur starring Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne and Rachel Brosnahan is a remake of a movie with the same title, released back in 1981, starring John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller.
The updated story is the tale of a nerdy, desk job, CIA analyst, named Charlie Heller (played by Rami Malek) whose life is shattered when his wife, Sarah (played by Rachel Brosnahan) is abducted and brutally killed by terrorists when she is away in London. He vows revenge. Using his genius level IQ, high powered computer software, and the many cameras that captured the killing, he is able to identify the half dozen people involved. He wants them all to die, and he is so filled with rage that he wants to be their executioner.
The problem is, he’s not an assassin or field operative. He nevertheless convinces his bosses to give him a chance to avenge his wife’s death. Before he sets out on his mission, he receives some crash course training from a tough-as-nails veteran agent played by Lawrence Fishburne.
It’s immediately clear that Heller lacks the skills to carry out his plan. He’s a nerd – physically non-threatening and a bad shot on the pistol range, lacking the killer instinct required to squeeze the trigger if he ever managed to confront his victims face to face.
His supervisors lead him to believe that they are prepping him to carry out his mission when, in fact, they are just setting him up. When Heller realizes what is going on, he goes rogue with his limited, newly-acquired skill set and an enormous abundance of brain power.
It’s a “Revenge of the Nerds” story with a tantalizing twist. A harmless looking guy who can dream up a dozen clever ways to kill you that don’t necessitate putting a bullet in your head.
It's a great premise, with endless possibilities. Sadly, some of Heller’s best ideas are telegraphed in the movie’s trailers.
In one scene, he booby traps a dazzling Plexiglas hotel swimming pool that spans two tall urban buildings. It fractures, crashes apart and falls multiple stories to the pavement below, killing the man who was swimming in it. It’s a truly specular scene, but one spoiled by the fact that we’ve already seen it multiple times and know exactly what is going to happen.
Maybe movie trailers should flash the words “Spoiler Alert” on the screen for scenes like this so that audiences who want to see the actual movie can shut their eyes and cover their ears.
In another scene, Heller suggests that one of his victims jump and run really quickly to avoid the violent explosion that happens a moment later. Again, been there, done that, saw it coming, having watched it in the trailers, multiple times.
Following a trend that has really gotten out of hand, movie trailers increasingly show too much of the movies they promote. While it might be a successful marketing ploy, the net result is a huge letdown when audiences realize they’ve already seen most of the good stuff in the previews.
The Amateur tries hard for style over substance. It is a dark, shadowy story. Heller’s office is a cramped, dimly lit, subterranean space with colorful computer screens. Most of the movie is underlit and underexposed. Much of the exterior action takes place at night. It’s a movie cliché that is often overdone in suspense and horror movies. As Stanley Kubrick demonstrated in The Shining (1980) broad daylight can be terrifying when a movie is in the hands of a master director.
There is some James Bond-style globe-hopping in The Amateur but what is missing is the pacing of the story, which relies on an unnecessary amount of setup and way too many fantasy flashbacks of the Heller’s deceased wife.
Once again, the movie trailers give away the fact that she dies at the hands of terrorists and that Heller sets out to avenge her death. The movie fails to take that into account, and consequently gets bogged down detailing the couple’s relationship and her shocking demise. It’s too much even for people who had not seen the trailers for The Amateur.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Rami Malek is back in an espionage thriller, hot on the heels of his role in No Time to Die (2021) when he played the eccentric Bond villain, Lyutsifer Safin.
Here, he plays a tortured, sympathetic man, steeped in a world of secrets and surveillance, on a mission to punish the perpetrators of a devastating act. His performance is a reason to see The Amateur, despite the fact that a good portion of the movie will look quite familiar.
Like the Steven Soderberg’s Black Bag, starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, it’s more about a battle of wits than the kind of action we’re accustomed to seeing in movies like this.
The main takeaway in The Amateur is that espionage is perhaps best left to the professionals.
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