The revenge thriller is among the most satisfying staples of cinema: generally, it features a hero with a very particular set of skills physically dominating anyone and everyone who gets in their way, en route to the ultimate catharsis of seeing wrongdoers get their comeuppance. That’s not the case in director James Hawes’ sophomore feature, The Amateur. Based on the novel by Robert Littell, our bad-guy-hunting hero isn’t a highly trained former assassin. He’s not even competent with a gun. Instead, Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is a desk-bound cryptographer, a “nerdy fella who works on computers”, as one character calls him. On paper, it’s an intriguing approach. But the execution is only semi-successful.
The Amateur is at its best in the first act. Once his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered and Charlie commits to going after the killers, Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli’s script leans into his naivety and inexperience. Charlie’s training with grizzled retired colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) goes poorly, and Charlie quickly learns that actually getting his hands dirty and doing the deed is much harder than he imagined, making big mistakes in the process. It’s relatable and realistic.
Hits all the beats you’d expect from a revenge thriller without digging too deep.
That soon shifts as Heller puts his intelligence and resourcefulness towards crafting intricate traps for his targets. The best kill — already spoiled in the trailers — is an elaborate sky-pool stunt that marks the film’s flashy high-point. Still, something is lost in Heller’s overly quick shift from bumbling newbie to calm, collected and hypercompetent killer.
At the same time, the thematic storytelling hits all the beats you’d expect from a revenge thriller without digging too deep. A thread about government accountability involving CIA Deputy Director Moore (Holt McCallany) and his new boss (Julianne Nicholson) is especially undercooked, and it all leads to an ending that is at best too neat and at worst implausible.
While he can be overly stiff and one-note, Malek is convincing as an unlikely, easy-to-root-for hero stepping out of his comfort zone. The rest of the stacked supporting cast is a mixed bag. No-one here is more underutilised than Jon Bernthal; playing a field agent who’s fond of Charlie, you could remove all three of his scenes from the movie and it wouldn’t change a thing. Elsewhere, Fishburne is fitfully entertaining as Henderson, his blunt dynamic with Charlie soon turning into begrudging respect. Caitriona Balfe also makes the most of her scenes as Inquiline, a hacker who soon becomes a valuable ally to Charlie. There’s a tenderness to their dynamic that’s a lot more resonant than anything we get with Malek and Brosnahan; Charlie keeps getting visions of Sarah that add up to precious little emotional capital.
That’s indicative of The Amateur as a whole – despite flashes of promise, that extra gear needed to take its thrills from modest to gripping is not in its skillset.
