“The Amateur” will not surprise or entertain you much for many bad reasons. Compared to all those countless spy thriller films during last several decades, the movie does not have any ounce of style and substance to distinguish itself at all, and you will only mindlessly follow its mechanical plot execution without much care or attention, while also occasionally depressed by the glaring waste of several talented actors on the screen.
Rami Malek, who is still in the search for any possible good role to go further than his Oscar-winning performance in “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018), plays Charles “Charlie” Heller. a young data analyst/code breaker working for CIA. At the beginning, the movie shows Heller going through his daily work at the CIA headquarters, and we notice how, as your average nerdy dude, he is usually awkward around others whenever he is not doing one task to be handled after another alone by himself.
The only person really close to Heller is his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), who never asks that much while accepting how her husband is often too busy with whatever he does outside their cozy house. When she goes to London for her another business trip, she is rather disappointed that he cannot accompany her again, but he sincerely promises that he will go to London with her in the next time, even though his mind soon becomes busy with whatever he is supposed to handle next in his workplace.
However, a few days after his wife’s departure, there comes the shocking news. She got unfortunately killed during a terror incident which suddenly occurred in the middle of London, and Heller is certainly devastated to say the least. In the end, he becomes quite determined to track down those several figures associated with his wife’s death for himself, and his direct supervisor is naturally not so pleased about Heller getting too personal about the ongoing investigation on that terror incident.
However, Heller happens to have something to blackmail his director supervisor, who turns out to have been doing a lot of unauthorized operations behind his back. He eventually agrees to let Heller go through a bit of training session under a top-notch trainer working at the CIA recruit camp, and Heller promptly begins his training session, though it looks like he is woefully unprepared as his trainer correctly sensed from the very beginning.
Of course, as many of you already guessed, it is soon revealed that Heller is actually quite ready for what he carefully planned in advance. Once everything is set and ready for him, he immediately runs away and then embarks on his quest for revenge, and he later gets some assistance from one of his key informers, who reluctantly decides to help him despite the considerable risk from that.
While this is certainly quite a typical setup, the screenplay by Ken Nolan and Garry Spinelli, which is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Littell, often fails to develop the story and characters from that. While its hero is a rather flat figure despite Malek’s diligent efforts, many other characters in the story are more or less than bland and superficial archetypes, and this weak aspect is quite evident especially when Heller finally confronts a shady figure directly responsible for his wife’s death. Just like several other villains confronted by Heller, this figure is not particularly interesting or memorable, and that is why the finale feels like a mere whimper instead of feeling dramatic in any possible way.
In case of action, the movie does provide several action sequences as expected, but none of them is impressive or engaging enough to hold our attention, and its technical qualities are surprisingly substandard in my inconsequential opinion. For instance, despite hopping around many different locations around the world, the movie is frequently drenched so much in stark and murky color scheme that it actually looks quite sterile without generating much thrill or excitement, and that makes the whole movie feel all the more tedious.
Many of the notable cast members around Malek do not have many things to do except filling their respective spots as demanded. Although she brings a bit of warmth to her several scenes, Rachel Brosnahan is limited by her thankless role, and the same thing can be said about Caitríona Balfe, who also tries her best with her under-written supporting roles. In case of Laurence Fishburne, Michael Stuhlbarg, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, and Jon Bernthal, these ever-dependable performers simply come and then go as required without leaving much impression on the whole, and this is another big disappointment in the film.
In conclusion, “The Amateur”, directed by James Hawes, is a pretty amateurish genre piece which does not bring anything new to its genre territory while also failing to entertaining us in more than one way, and I must confess that my mind sometimes went to many other better spy thriller films out there while becoming less and less interested in whatever was happening on the screen. For example, I recently watched Steve Soderbergh’s new film “Black Bag” (2025), and that film has much more wit, interest, and thrill compared to “The Amateur”. Believe me, you will have a lot better time if you watch “Black Bag” instead of this mediocre product, and you may thank me for that later.
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