The Nerd Identity.  The Geek Ultimatum.  Although it may sound like I’m being snide, both of those fake titles describe The Amateur perfectly.  The movie isn’t about an extremely capable one man wrecking crew out for revenge, like the characters played by Matt Damon, Jason Statham, Denzel Washington, for example.  Instead we have Rami Malek, who nobody would ever describe as being physically threatening.  He has the body of a man who’s probably never set foot in a gym, and if he ever did it was to reboot the WI-FI router.

As played by Malek, Charlie Heller is an atypical hero for a revenge thriller.  From the first moment he sat down to work, I believed that he’d spent his entire career hunched in front of computer screens, commanding microprocessors to do unfathomable things.  Charlie works in the CIA’s Cryptography department, decrypting files in the furtherance of American interests abroad.  In the early going, he receives files of secret stuff from his contact, code-named “Inquiline”.  In true nerd fashion, he’s not motivated by what secrets could be in the files, but because he can use the powerful resources at his disposal to unlock them.  Charlie is a coder first, spook distant second.

With that in mind, Charlie’s reaction at what he sees in those files was unsurprising to me.  They refute the official American narrative about a drone strike in Kabul that killed innocent civilians.  Charlie knows the information is dangerous, and if leaked he’d be drummed out of the agency before he could spell CNN.  It goes without saying that Charlie’s situation will change quickly and dramatically, requiring him to use his newfound knowledge to get his way.

Before we arrive at that point, we learn that Charlie is a happily married man.  His wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) is far too beautiful for him, but apparently she sees something in Charlie that nobody else does.  In their brief scenes early on, they have a gentle and supportive relationship.  Sarah is beautiful and radiant, which is because she’s played by the beautiful and radiant Brosnahan.  Charlie and Sarah make for an odd couple, with his awkwardness contrasting sharply with her poise.  Sarah definitely completes Charlie, which is why I understood the insane course of action he takes upon learning of her death.

Sarah had the unfortunate luck of attending a conference at the same hotel in London where  armed terrorists have business to conduct.  (The movie doesn’t specify Sarah’s profession or what the conference is about.)  When the terrorists round up hostages, Sarah helps another attendee get out of sight, which results in her capture.  When the situation gets out of control for the armed gunmen, the one who grabbed Sarah executes her to show the police that they mean business.  In an instant, the best part of Charlie’s life has been extinguished forever.

The scenes that follow constitute the saddest day in Charlie’s life.  He receives her body in a nondescript box at the airport.  Later, he opens her suitcase at home, finds a gift she purchased for him and breaks down and sobs.  After a sleepless night, Charlie goes into work and uses the computers to figure out who the terrorists are.  (The omnipresence of security cameras and the power of facial recognition software make this a snap.)  When Charlie presents his findings to his superiors, CIA Deputy Director Alex Moore (Holt McCallany) and CIA supervisor Caleb Horowitz (Danny Sapani), he’s surprised that they already know who’s involved.  When they offer flimsy reasons for why they haven’t apprehended the criminals yet, I figure Charlie guessed the real reason behind the delay–his bosses have worked with them before.

Moore and Horowitz insist Charlie let the CIA handle things, but he’s dead set on getting revenge for his wife.  He blackmails them with the intel he received earlier and insists on being trained to work in the field.  Moore and Horowitz go along because they figure they’ll find his intel.  And when they do, they can arrest him for treason and lock him up for a very long time whenever.  So they’ll humor him to bide time.

Moore and Horowitz assign Robert “Hendo” Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) to be his mentor, who is wonderfully blunt about Charlie’s chances for success.  As I previously mentioned, Charlie can’t physically overpower anyone, and he also can’t shoot worth a damn.  Even more concerning is that he has no killer instinct.  (He is “The Amateur”, after all.)  However, he is good at building timing devices, which means he can threaten and/or kill people without getting his hands dirty.

When Moore and Horowitz are unable to find Charlie’s stash of incriminating info, they decide to terminate Charlie’s training program–and him as well.  However, Charlie gives them the slip and flies to Europe for revenge.  As Charlie hunts down his wife’s killers in one exotic locale after another, it’s clear that his superiors were very wrong about him.  As a man with nothing left to lose, Charlie’s much more dangerous than he appears, a computer genius where everything and anything is accessible via a laptop.

Recommendation

What I liked most about The Amateur is that it doesn’t recycle the same formula that countless other male revenge thrillers have used for ages.  The hero of this movie isn’t a former secret agent/black ops/paramilitary soldier with expert knowledge of weaponry and lethal hand-to-hand combat skills.  Not that I have anything against those movies, which are fun in a “how’s he going to kill this group of heavily armed guys” sort of way.  But aside from who’s dishing out the bloody  justice they tend to suffer from a feeling of sameness.

The Amateur, however, features a hero who fits the classical definition of a wimp.  (Is calling someone a wimp permitted these days?)  Played by Academy Award-winning actor Rami Malek, the only threatening thing about him is his brain, which he uses to take down the bad guys who “fridged” his wife.  As such, Malek turns out to be the perfect representative for today’s computer-savvy professionals.  He’s neither physically fit nor handsome, but could end you with a few keystrokes.

Aside from its very non-traditional leading man, the movie does fall back on the elements that make movies like these so much fun.  There are regular changes of scenery (Paris, Istanbul, Madrid, Romania, the Baltic Sea) and a who’s who supporting cast.  Rachel Brosnahan, the former Mrs. Maisel and upcoming romantic interest for a gent named Superman, plays the ill-fated wife.  Instead of having her disappear after her first act demise, the movie has her float in and out of the hero’s consciousness like William Wallace’s wife in Braveheart.  Caitríona Balfe brings a world-weary sadness to her informant character.  Julianne Nicholson has a couple of good scenes as the “over her head” CIA director.

On the male side of the cast, Laurence Fishburne is as funny as he is imposing.  Holt McCallany plays another devious government agent.  Michael Stuhlbarg appears in the end to good effect, delivering a villain monologue with the cold, dispassionate inflections of a lifelong killer for hire.  Jon Bernthal only appears in two scenes and steals them so easily that I wished he was around more.

Director James Hawes, who’s worked extensively in television prior to this movie, keeps the action moving at a moderate clip.  Unlike other films in this genre, where the tension continuously builds towards a heated climax, Hawes’ stop-and-go pacing felt counterintuitive at first. However, it effectively puts us into the mindset of a protagonist who’s emotions swing from crippling depression to lethal action. The screenplay by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli is a jumble at times with characters randomly appearing and disappearing from the story, but it always maintains focus on the tragic hero at its center.

The Amateur is an entertaining alternative to the “one man wrecking crew” films.  It uses Rami Malek’s geeky nature to good effect and the supporting cast are all solid.  The movie doesn’t reinvent the spy thriller or the revenge fantasy but offers an interesting take on both.  A well-made and entertaining film.  Recommended.

Analysis

As someone who has been a professional computer programmer/software developer/application developer for over thirty years, The Amateur felt it was made to appeal to people just like me.  To be clear, I’ve never worked for the CIA and am not an expert in cryptography.  However, I understood the conundrum facing a man like Charlie (Rami Malek) who wants to kill the men responsible for his wife’s death.  Although he knows who they are, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to do what he feels must be done.

Unlike his field agent buddy Jackson O’Brien (Jon Bernthal), Charlie has a build that can charitably be described as slender.  That means physically confronting his targets is out of the question.  He can only hit a target with a gun if he’s directly in front of it, so guns aren’t an option, either.  Even when Charlie has a gun in his hands and is ordered by Hendo (Laurence Fishburne) to fire, he can’t do it because he doesn’t have a killer instinct.  If I found myself in Charlie’s situation, I’d feel as helpless as he does in the first part of this movie.

Thankfully, the movie doesn’t try to turn Charlie into a lethal avenger overnight.  Instead, it lets Charlie remain a nerd and figures out what he can do with the skills he has.  Charlie is smarter than everyone else, so he focuses on how he can use that to his advantage.  His ability to solve puzzles makes creating detonation devices an easy task.  In combination with his ability to hack into any computer system on the planet, he finds that he has the tools necessary to kill people.

Not that killing comes easy to Charlie.  He freaks out when his first target is run over trying to get away from him.  In a nicely understated scene, Hondo confides in Charlie that he’s never gotten over killing anyone.  The irony there is that we know that Hondo was ordered to kill Charlie before he left for Europe.  Hondo leaves out that little detail, which makes what he says land harder on us that it does for Charlie.

After his next two kills, Charlie’s growing callousness towards what he’s doing becomes apparent.  Although he may regret what he’s doing in the name of his wife, Charlie continues his quest for vengeance because he’s convinced that he’s the only one who will.  This is reaffirmed when O’Brien shows up in Russia and tells Charlie to get out of Dodge.  Instead of offering to help his friend, O’Brien tells him to put his head on a swivel and vanishes.  Although the movie doesn’t show it, I imagine Charlie must have been very disappointed in his friend’s response.  What good is it to save a field agent from certain death if you can’t call in a favor?

A most unlikely leading man

In 2019, Rami Malek won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Bohemian Rhapsody.  While I understand why people hate the movie, it doesn’t change how I feel about Malek’s performance.  It’s a lightning bolt that drives the narrative.  Malek imbues Freddy with that air of inevitability we feel around certain people that we know are destined to be a star.  Malek also brings out Mercury’s cockiness and vanity, important traits for rock stars back in the Seventies.

Yes, the false teeth Malek wore were too big and actually were totally unnecessary, considering how his teeth naturally protrude.  And yes, Malek is much shorter than Mercury was in real life.  (Kristen Stewart portrayed Lady Diana–movie magic!)  What Malek does is recreate Mercury’s essence, both as a performer and a person, and that’s why I think he won.  Bradley Cooper’s performance in A Star is Born is better, but for some reason the Academy is dead-set on Cooper never winning anything.

Six years later, I’d be hard-pressed to name an actor who’s gotten less mileage after winning an Academy Award than Malek.  Even Adrien Brody, who had a huge comeback this year winning again for The Brutalist, landed roles in significant projects (The Village, King Kong, Hollywoodland, The Darjeeling Limited, The Brothers Bloom) for several years before crashing to Earth.

In Malek’s case, however, his big win was a curse.  Aside from playing a horribly underwritten bad guy in No Time To Die, Malek had supporting roles until The Amateur, which he co-produced.  Instead of Malek’s career taking off, it stalled.  My guess is that Hollywood didn’t know what to do with an actor with Malek’s unique looks.  At the expense of sounding cruel, his bulging eyes, jutting teeth and awkward manner are ill-suited for a leading man.  He reminds me of Peter Lorre, an unattractive man who had a lengthy career because he was the opposite of the typical leading man.  Lorre looked weird and could act creepy, which kept him busy for a long time.  Malek is similarly…different.

If it sounds like I’m saying that Malek should resign himself to playing creepy weirdos for the rest of his career, that’s not the case.  He had a small but significant part in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which showed that he’s a capable actor with the ability to hold your attention even in a handful of scenes.  The issue is that Malek needs to find the right roles to be effective, and those will be few and far between.

Malek should never have been considered as a leading man, but his Best Actor win says otherwise.  I get the feeling that Malek after taking home the Oscar, he waited for offers for leading roles to arrive.  When none did, he took what he could get, which was supporting roles.  Perhaps Malek saw The Amateur as a way to reintroduce himself to audiences, which it does and although he’s good in it, it’s clear that Malek was born to be a character actor, and not a leading man.

Random scans

When Jon Bernthal’s character appeared in the beginning, I fully expected him to reappear in the end because he’s a well-known actor.  However, instead of helping Malek complete his revenge journey, he only warns him to leave or he’ll get himself killed.  Something must have happened to his character in the editing room, because this felt like a bait-and-switch.

I was flummoxed that Fishburne’s character miraculously showed up alive at the end.  My guess is that the filmmakers were setting up a potential sequel.

Let’s go Krogering!

Heineken, the official beer of actual spies and wannabes the world over.

2025 has quietly become the Year of Dad Movies.  So far, we’ve gotten A Working Man, The Accountant 2, Last Breath, The Amateur, Den of Thieves 2, Flight Risk, Warfare, Mission: Impossible 8.