The Amateur Review

Directed By: James Hawes
Written By: Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli; Based on the book by Robert Littell
Runtime: 123 minutes
MPA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, and language.

Rami Malek – Charles Heller
Laurence Fishburne – Colonel Robert Henderson
Rachel Brosnahan – Sarah
Caitríona Balfe – Inquiline Davies
Holt McCallany – CIA Deputy Director Alex Moore
Julianne Nicholson – CIA Director Samantha O’Brien
Michael Stuhlbarg – Sean Schiller
Danny Sapani – Caleb
Adrian Martinez – Carlos
Jon Bernthal – Jackson O’Brien

Oscar winner Rami Malek stars in the new spy thriller The Amateur. Based on the novel of the same name by Robert Littell, Malek plays a quiet introvert and CIA cryptographer, Charles Heller. Although Heller’s skills as a data analyst are unparalleled, he has never worked in the field. However, a personal tragedy soon thrusts Charles on a path of righteous revenge. Unfortunately, director James Hawes cannot quite rise to the occasion with the source material, helming a pedestrian, predictable plot lacking any twisty intrigue.

Charles Heller spends his days in front of a computer at the CIA’s Langley office, decoding sensitive data from an anonymous source. After unwitting uncovering some of the CIA’s less than savory false flag operations spearheaded by his boss, Deputy Director Alex Moore (McCallany), Heller receives the tragic news of his wife’s, Sarah (Brosnahan), murder at the hands of black ops mercenaries, led by the elusive Sean Schiller (Nicholson).

Devastated by his wife’s death, Heller blackmails Moore into letting him get trained by a seasoned CIA Spook, Col. Robert Henderson (Fishburne), so he can get a shot at his wife’s killers. Moore is less than enthused by Heller’s threat to blow the whistle on his off-the-books wetwork, so Moore superficially acquiesces to Heller while plotting against him. Heller enters a dangerous game he has no experience playing, so he must use his knowledge and data analyst skillset to outwit seasoned field agents and his superiors.

The Amateur provides a strong premise, but Hawes and co-writers Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli fail to bring it together as an engrossing spy groove. The idea of a career analyst seeking to venture into the field to get revenge on his wife’s killers has potential, but the film fails to reach that apex. Malek plays the introverted data analyst who is inexperienced in fieldwork quite well, but that’s the extent of the film’s quality. Laurence Fishburne portraying a hard-nosed field agent and mentor who must whip the nerdy Heller into shape for field operations had the potential for enjoyable entertainment. Unfortunately, The Amateur takes far too long to reach that point, and Fishburne and Heller don’t spend much time together. Fishburne is painfully under-utilized despite his significant presence in the marketing materials.

Rachel Brosnahan has little to do other than playing the thankless role of Heller’s tragic wife. Sarah appears very little before her death, and her character lacks agency. She appears sparingly throughout the film as a spectral, dreamlike vision, her memory haunting the grieving widower. An acting talent such as Brosnahan deserves better.

Part of the problem with Brosnahan’s Sarah is that her death happens so abruptly and mostly off-screen. There are pieces of the incident leading to her execution in flashbacks and security footage. The way the film presents the sequence suggests that the narrative is hiding something about Sarah’s death. Not to mention, the plot features a recurring motif about puzzles. In her belongings, Heller finds a metal puzzle Sarah meant to gift him upon return from her work trip. Heller’s work entails decrypting data puzzles, and Sarah also refers to her husband as a puzzle. Despite all the talk of puzzles, The Amateur does not present one and travels the path of least resistance, which creates a boring experience for a spy thriller. The film downright calls for a deeper tangled web that never unfolds.

Jon Bernthal curiously appears in some short scenes as a CIA field agent whom Heller idolizes at first. Their initial scenes play like the high school star quarterback and the nerd he bullies to do his homework assignments, yet the nerd still painfully idolizes the jock for his reputation as one of the cool kids. Bernthal does appear later in a pointless payoff to the earlier setup, and he looks like he accidentally wandered onto the set of The Amateur for another movie. His screen time and impact on the story are of so little consequence that his scenes could be easily cut from the film.

The most significant waste in The Amateur is how it quickly reveals what could have turned out as a major plot twist or reveal much later involving Alex Moore and his extralegal black ops. Disclosing all that information upfront diminishes much of the larger plot’s sense of intrigue and suspense. Even Heller’s drive for revenge lacks a compelling angle since the plot fails to depict Sarah’s execution, which could have set the emotional stakes for the story and made Heller’s personal goals more compelling. The Amateur has a PG-13 rating, but it fails to provide a better view of Sarah’s execution without being too gruesome or explicit.

Not showing Sarah’s death fails to sell Heller’s mission of vengeance, and the rest of the experience comes off in a hollow fashion. The Amateur plays for a big crescendo that never arrives.

5.0

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

The Amateur features a formidable cast and a solid basic premise, but the film amounts to a limp, undercooked cinematic experience. Martin Ruhe provides pristine cinematography, and the production values look strong, representing the mid-budget spy thrillers of yore. Unfortunately, the story lacks the intrigue and suspense crucial to elevate such an experience, and the film wastes its best actors in throwaway roles. The Amateur has the building blocks of a much better film that never coalesces.