I am a sucker for an old-school studio programmer spy thriller that used to play on repeat on cable, one where you can just take it all in and not overthink it, like Enemy of the State, Ronin, or Entrapment. Directed by James Hawes, who got an excellent Anthony Hopkins performance we took for granted last year in One Life, upgraded from the Holocaust historical drama in the global espionage thriller The Amateur. It is in the same vein of those thrillers and despite being decent, a refreshing breath of fresh air that 20th Century releases this wide theatrically when it could have just gone to Hulu. We can thank the international locations and the strong star power which it full of like Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Jon Bernthal, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Julianne Nicholson who are all adequate but didn’t live up to expectations of this exceptional ensemble. The Amateur is a well-made and over-the-top thriller and the kind of movie we used to get in theaters, so I was glad to have experienced it with a paying sneak preview audience on a Saturday night last weekend.
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The film centers around an awkwardly cast Rami Malek in the leading role, as an introverted decoder for the CIA named Charles Heller. He goes through “denial, anger, acceptance” after his wife is murdered during a grim and shocking London terrorist attack. I was surprised at how much The Amateur takes time to explore Charles’s trauma of losing his wife instead of being an emotional detached protagonist. (The locket from his wife that read “so you don’t get lost in the cloud” was a nice emotional touch.) Overcome with grief and coping to investigate the powers that be behind the attack, he has the tools at his disposal to an almost outlandish and entertaining degree to parse what happened and track down the terrorists. Malek is a very good actor who needs better roles and I don’t think the story serves his talents well and at the same time doesn’t have what it takes to be the central character in this story.
Despite my hesitations with the casting, I was able to let them go and enjoy some of the more unbelievable moments in The Amateur. My favorite scene of pure entertainment is when Heller analyzed photos at a vineyard with an incredible degree of spacing of the plants from the sun in the sky to a building in the background. Another moment involved elaborate effects like the shattering of a glass pool constructed for this destruction. Bourne-ish and never dull, one thing that made The Amateur refreshing was how his awkwardness and lack of forcefulness set him up for precarious situations.
Problems arise while training at a gun range where he can’t hit the targets, foreshadowing his worse situation and proving more problems. You are almost laughing, if not cringing, at his low confidence in trying to kill people, which sort of reminded me of Dev Patel in last year’s “Monkey Man” minus Patel’s killer instinct that commanded his sloppy fight choreography. Filled with so many taut moments that kept me engaged and on the edge of my seat, audiences will have a good time watching a spy thriller like The Amateur, which is captivating yet conventional.
The Amateur is now playing in theaters nationwide.
