This revenge thriller follows Charles Heller, a CIA cryptographer played by Rami Malek, whose wife Sarah gets killed in a terrorist attack in London. When the agency refuses to go after her killers, he blackmails his way into field training and goes rogue to hunt them down himself. It's based on a 1981 novel, and frankly, it feels like it.
The setup actually works pretty well. Malek's grief feels genuine, and there's something compelling about watching this nerdy desk jockey transform into a reluctant assassin. The film establishes early on that Heller can build bombs and kill people remotely, but he can't pull a trigger face to face - an interesting psychological wrinkle that the movie never fully explores. I kept waiting for the film to dig deeper into this contradiction, but it mostly treats it as a quirky character trait rather than a meaningful exploration of violence and morality.
What frustrated me most was how bloated the whole thing felt. The movie tries to juggle Heller's personal revenge story, CIA corruption involving his boss Alex Moore, a tech-thriller angle with his mysterious informant "Inquiline" and philosophical musings about the nature of violence. None of these get the attention they deserve. The CIA training sequence with Laurence Fishburne feels particularly pointless - Heller learns to make IEDs, which he probably could have figured out from YouTube anyway.
Speaking of Fishburne, his character Robert Henderson is completely wasted. He shows up as this menacing trainer, has one good scene in a bar, then mysteriously gets shot and disappears, only to pop up at the end being weirdly supportive. I'm convinced his role was heavily cut in post-production because nothing about his arc makes sense. The same goes for Jon Bernthal, who appears in maybe three scenes total as "The Bear" offers some vague mentor advice that gets immediately contradicted by the plot, then vanishes. It feels like sequel bait that nobody asked for.
The actual revenge kills are a mixed bag. The first target, Gretchen Frank in Paris, dies in this elaborate pollen trap that triggers her allergies - it's simultaneously ingenious and completely ridiculous. Watching Malek break into her apartment using a lock-picking tutorial he found online got genuine laughs from me, though I'm not sure that was intentional. The second kill in Madrid involves some convoluted underwater explosive device at a rooftop pool. These scenes work as individual set pieces, but they highlight how the movie can't decide if it wants to be a grief revenge thriller or a silly spy thriller.
What really bothered me was the ending. After all this buildup about Heller's burning need for revenge, he captures the main villain Horst Schiller but doesn't kill him - just turns him over to authorities. I get that this is supposed to show character growth, but it feels emotionally hollow after everything we've been through. The film seems to think this makes Heller noble, but it left me feeling cheated out of the satisfying payoff the entire movie had been building toward.
Malek's performance is okay but limited. He's good at playing the awkward, obsessive computer guy, but when he's supposed to show deep grief or emotion, he comes across as stiff and robotic instead of heartbroken. I thought maybe his character was meant to be autistic, which would explain the social awkwardness, but the movie never makes that clear. Rachel Brosnahan is completely wasted as the dead wife - she's mostly just there in quick flashback scenes. We never really get to know her as a person, so it's hard to care that she died or understand why Charlie loved her so much.
The movie looks and sounds fine, but nothing special. The director James Hawes does a competent job, but there's nothing memorable about how it's filmed. My biggest complaint was how dark everything was - I literally couldn't see important details in several scenes because the lighting was so poor. The whole thing has this outdated 90s thriller feel that might hit you with nostalgia, but it doesn't bring anything fresh to the genre.
I kept comparing it unfavorably to other recent spy thrillers, particularly Black Bag, which handled similar themes with much more intelligence and emotional depth. The Amateur had all the right pieces - a strong central concept, decent cast, relevant themes about institutional corruption - but it fumbles the execution at almost every turn.
There are moments that work. The puzzle metaphor that runs throughout, connected to a compass Sarah gave Charlie, is actually quite touching. Some of the tech elements are clever, especially when Heller uses his analytical skills to track down his targets. And there's something refreshing about seeing a protagonist who wins through intelligence rather than superior firepower. But these highlights are buried under a mountain of missed opportunities and narrative dead ends.
The Amateur isn't terrible, but it's aggressively mediocre. It's the kind of movie that might work fine as background viewing on a streaming service, but it doesn't justify the theater experience. If you're looking for a thoughtful exploration of grief and revenge, look elsewhere. If you just want to watch Rami Malek methodically hunt down bad guys while making questionable moral choices, you might find something to enjoy here.
The film left me with the distinct impression that there was probably a better movie somewhere in the editing room, but what we got feels like a compromise that satisfied no one. It's perfectly watchable and completely forgettable - which might be the most worst thing you can say about a revenge thriller.
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