Ticketworthy! - The Amateur

There are certain things that a decent spy movie ought to have. There should be likeable characters, solid action, strong motivations, and ideally a good actor or two to pull the whole thing together. Just going by that list, it’s hard to say that The Amateur fails. The core of a really excellent thriller is there. It’s the edges of the movie where things start to unravel as it can’t quite stick the landing. Honestly, I’m more disappointed by what the film could have been than what it actually is.

Rami Malek stars as Charlie Heller, a brilliant CIA analyst and doting husband who learns that his wife has been killed and demands justice. When the higher-ups at the CIA refuse to do anything about it, Charlie goes rogue and starts hunting down his wife’s killers one-by-one to avenge her. At the same time, he has to evade being killed by his corrupt bosses who want to silence him and keep the entire thing under wraps.

As a premise, this works fine. Charlie is a well-defined character, and his motivations are not only understandable, but completely believable given what we see from him before everything goes down. A big part of that is Malek, who plays Charlie with equal parts calculated genius and raw vulnerability. It’s an impressive performance that sometimes feels better than the movie it’s in. Laurence Fishburne is also excellent as Henderson, the CIA assassin sent to kill Charlie. It’s a part that could have been straightforward and uninteresting, but Fishburne adds layers to the performance. The begrudging respect between the two men is a nice element added to what could have been a boring relationship.

For as much as the performances are a highlight, though, the way the characters are used is inconsistent, to put it mildly. Charlie, for instance, is introduced as something of a geek. He’s not strong, he’s not tough, he can’t handle a gun, and the movie repeatedly points out how scared he is of even just traveling. This is not your average super-spy. That’s fine, the whole point is that he is brilliant and is able to cobble together traps and other non-conventional methods of killing his targets.

Except, to buy any of that, you kind of have to ignore everything that actually happens. Sure, Charlie can’t shoot, but he goes toe to toe with a trained assassin in a fistfight, repeatedly outruns and dodges people trying to kill him, and performs stunts that I just do not believe this man should be capable of. He is too good of a spy to be believable as an analyst, and too good an analyst to make sense as a spy.

The explanation for this disjointed character might lie in director James Hawes who, to his credit, does a competent job. None of the shots or scenes are going to blow anybody away, but it’s all well enough made that there’s nothing to complain about. Hawes has primarily directed television shows, and that makes Charlie’s depiction make a lot more sense. On television, this character would have had a whole season to grow from the meek, fearful nerd we start with into the confident badass we see dispatching professional killers. Sadly, that’s not a journey Hawes has time to take us on in movie form, and it’s jarring.

The lack of time spent on Charlie’s growth also unfortunately extends to his acts of revenge themselves. They are mostly unimaginative. The only kill that’s memorable at all, a visually fun rooftop pool explosion, was spoiled by the trailer. Beyond that, they’re all very quick and pretty dull.  

On the subject of quick and dull, special mention should go to the ending. It happens in the blink of an eye. For a movie that spends nearly two hours building up to a final confrontation, it’s a huge letdown for that confrontation to end with a whimper. It feels like they just ran out of ideas and needed to get to the credits, which is disappointing to say the least.

Still, if you can accept that the journey is more important than the destination, the lead ups to each of Charlie’s acts of revenge are interesting and genuinely thrilling. Since the actual killings are so quick, that means that the vast majority of the movie is enjoyable. It’s just a shame that there’s so little payoff to any of it. Just a few tweaks could have done wonders for The Amateur, but despite the talent involved, the whole thing never quite comes together. It isn’t a bad movie at all, but it does live up to its name.