Rami Malek as Heller in 20th Century Studio's THE AMATEUR. Photo by John Wilson. © 2024 20th Centruy Studios.
I really wanted to like this film, I promise. Alas, there is a moment in The Amateur when you can almost see what this movie could have been—if only it had arrived in the era it was meant for. In many ways, this is a ’90s thriller dropped into the sleek, self-aware landscape of 2025 with all the cool and scary CIA technology, but it doesn’t quite fit. It plays like a dusty cassette tape found in a drawer of old CIA thrillers: familiar, competent, and completely careless with it’s female characters.
Directed by James Hawes and starring Rami Malek as Charlie Heller, a grieving cryptographer-turned-reluctant-killer. The Amateur checks off every box in the genre playbook. There are shadowy government agencies, encrypted files, slow-motion gunfire, and plenty of moral ambiguity. What’s missing is a compelling reason for it to matter beyond the genre itself. Don’t get me wrong- the film is beautiful to watch as it takes us from the United States to Turkey and other landmarks in Europe. The technology is insane and really innovative in how Charlie uses it to take down his targets. If you want to watch a film mindlessly, then this is the one. But I left the theatre asking myself WHY it needed to be made as it doesn’t advance the genre in any meaningful way.
As with every single male-lead action movie, the inciting incident is – drum roll please- another dead wife to spark a man’s journey into violence. It’s hard not to roll your eyes as the “killing your wife” trope is the action drama’s most overused shortcut to male emotional depth, and the film doesn’t do anything new with it. I will give credit to Rachel Brosnahan as Sarah Heller, the modest manic pixie dream girl who is a professional but also her “unusual” husband’s caretaker. The most disappointing aspect of this is that all the screenwriter had to do was give her some agency – like wouldn’t it be cool if she didn’t die and instead made it back to the US as one of the few survivors? And because Charlie is so disturbed by the CIA’s inability to avenge the victims of this terrorist attack, he decides to use his special cyber-hacker talents to take down the bad guys himself. This rebranding of the male action hero combined with the sweet-ass action and tech in this film would make the movie more relevant to 2025 and give viewers a more honourable man to root for.
But no, Sarah exists solely to die, so that Malek’s character can justify his descent into gun-toting vengeance. And that is not the only time this film fridges the capable women in this film. Charlie’s intel, Inquiline, played by Catríona Balfe is the main reason he is able to stay undercover for most of the film, she is the reason he was able to get money, access to new weapons and yet her character is misused as well. She doesn’t serve the film at all except to isolate Charlie. At this point, the trope strips women of agency and reinforces the narrative that a man’s transformation requires a woman’s erasure.
I was excited to see Laurence Fishburne but once again he has been delegated to the sidelines as he elevates another male lead. He has played this role too many times and it’s offensive to his career because he is a brilliant actor. Jon Bernthal also shows up for two scenes- complete waste of the actor and I don’t know why they casted such a big star only to underuse him. Also, at just over two hours, the film drags under the weight of its own seriousness and disappoints with its carelessness with half of its cast..
The Amateur is in theatres now.
