The Amateur - Review

I first remember seeing Rami Malek in Need For Speed, the 2014 video game adaptation which is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. In it, Malek plays the techy member of the crew, in a largely forgettable performance. He also had small and underplayed roles in Short Term 12 and a Night at the Museum sequel. However, Malek would be put on the map with Mr Robot, and finally reach the pinnacle with his Best Actor win for Bohemian Rhapsody. Since then he has starred as a Bond villain and has a small role in Sir Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It is quite the career trajectory he is heading on, which continues with The Amateur.

In the film, which is directed by the director of all of Season 1 of Slow Horses, James Hawes, Malek plays Charlie Heller who works in the Decryption and Analysis branch of the CIA. Charlie is given special underground access, working in their coding and surveillance department, as well as doing in-depth analysis of threats. One day, one of his sources provides data that is highly compromising for the CIA, linking them to a thread of recent terrorist attacks. Charlie does some digging against what he is hired to do. However, days later, he is informed that his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) has been killed in a terror attack on a business trip. Without the trust of the CIA, Charlie goes rogue and begins to hunt his wife’s killers.

The Amateur then is like a techy Bourne, which is well shot and doesn’t play to the current action aesthetic, with tense moments clearly displayed and a clean, cold and muted colour palette of blues, whites and greys. The twist, however, is that Charlie is not a killer. Even when trained by Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), he can barely hit a target from a few meters away. As he goes on the run, he is going to need new tactics to complete his mission.

If you enjoy Rami Malek, you will probably enjoy him here, it is a solid performance, although a little tiring that he has been typecast as the tech-savvy geek. Yet, he is believable in a largely unbelievable world. He completely sells the loss of his wife and the desire for revenge, accompanied by a pretty great score by Volker Bertelmann. But this world is one that feels quite unrealistic in terms of how events unfold.

There is also a sluggish execution to the film. There are elements of the opening act that don’t influence the narrative when it is so obvious how it should. Especially when it comes to the wife’s death and CIA corruption. Perhaps Charlie was in charge of Chekov’s gun. Yet, The Amateur is a fairly accomplished and somewhat old-fashioned action film that whilst not super memorable, hits the spot.