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THE AMATEUR (2025)
Director: James Hawes Cast: Rami Malek, Holt McCallany, Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Julianne Nicholson, Caitríona Balfe, Danny Sapani, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jon Bernthal, Adrian Martinez MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:03 Release Date: 4/11/25 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 11, 2025 The conceit of The Amateur is intriguing enough that one understands why filmmakers would want to return to it. It's based on a 1981 novel of the same by Robert Littell that was successful enough for a forgotten—and mostly forgettable—movie adaptation to be released in the same year the book was published. More than four decades later, here's a second version, and in another 40 years or so, maybe we'll be talking about how forgotten—and mostly forgettable—this one is, too. As for the story's main concept, it is a good one. This is basically a revenge thriller, pitting one man against an international criminal organization that murdered his wife while she was overseas. There's nothing special in this, of course, or the fact that our protagonist works for the CIA. No, the real gimmick here is that Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) isn't the type of person one would think of as a vengeance-seeker. That's not on account of him not wanting to. It's because he is, as his superior at the agency puts it, the kind of guy who looks like he'd lose in arm-wrestling match to a 90-year-old nun. Heller's not an action hero, to put it simply. After he arranges some training with an expert in field operations, Heller tries shooting at a target with a pistol and constantly misses. His trainer puts him closer to the target, and the guy misses some more, until Heller walks right up to the body-shaped outline to finally hit his marks. What the character lacks in physical prowess and aim, however, he more than makes up for with his intelligence. He's an analyst with the CIA, after all, who spends all of his working hours entrenched in codes, top-secret documents, and more information than should probably be reasonable for a government agency to possess. At home, he thinks about that stuff, does assorted puzzles—such as reassembling a single-engine plane—as a hobby, and spends time with his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan). When she's murdered by that criminal group when an arms deal they're participating in goes wrong in London, all Heller has left is information and a new puzzle to tackle: how to find the people responsible for his wife's death and to make them pay. In theory, the resulting plot should be at least half as smart as the movie presumes its protagonist to be. That's the whole point, after all—to watch a man use his brains to outwit, outmaneuver, and take out people who could and would kill him with their weapons or even, given just how meek Heller is, their bare hands. Instead, the screenplay by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli simply makes our man a bit smarter than the people he's hunting and the CIA agents chasing him, because he basically extorts his boss Moore (Holt McCallany) with the sinister cover-up in which Heller knows the higher-up is involved. They're not too bright, unfortunately. That includes Heller's targets, whom he ensnares in assorted death traps, such an airtight chamber to check on asthma that he fills with pollen, a swimming pool that's situated in the space between two tall buildings, and a weapons crate rigged with an explosive. None of these methods is particularly clever (apart from the allergen thing, which is also kind of funny in a way that undermines the moment), and director James Hawes has to rush the staging of them, lest we're given too much time to wonder, for example, why the guy in the pool doesn't just swim the shorter distance to safety before Heller starts his device. The same goes for the villainous agents, who, after discovering that his extortion threat was a bluff, eventually send Heller's trainer Col. Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) to kill him. That's stopped more quickly than it takes Henderson to train the guy, with a single explosive and a bit of confusingly convenient plotting involving an anonymous second agent. The threats here are regularly dismissed shortly after they're introduced, as the plot just keeps moving from new locale to new locale, from one booby-trap scheme to the next, and from one character speaking quite cryptically to another. Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, and Michael Stuhlbarg appear in glorified cameos to add far-too momentary tension to the routine plot or brief support for Heller. Malek's performance does at least live up to the promise of a wholly unlikely hero being placed in the middle of a thriller in which even some amount of action-based skill would better serve him. He doesn't put on a tough front, a wry sense of humor, or anything else as Heller. The actor simply plays him as a plain, intelligent, and hyper-focused man, who'd probably be quite boring if not for the fact that he's being chased by killers and orchestrating those traps. Neither Malek nor the character is the real problem here. It's that execution of The Amateur, in terms of its plot and its style, is as mundane as the movie's hero. We could accept one or the other being that way. Both of them being so is just, well, kind of dull. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for some strong violence, and language)
