‘The Amateur’ Review: The Wild Mr. Robot Is Bourne Again
The Amateur is the third spy/revenge thriller out right now, between The Accountant 2 and theaters still showing A Working Man. While it’s not performing as strongly (as that second film has been, especially against expectations), it isn’t without its strengths. The thing is that those strengths can be summed up in one name: Rami Malek.
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Malek plays Charlie Heller, a straight-laced cryptographer and computer nerd for the CIA who comes to work one day while his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) goes to London for a business trip. When his agency bosses break the bad news, she is taken hostage and killed by mercenaries in a shootout, Charlie uses the dirt he has on his superiors to blackmail them into letting him avenge her.
They send him to train on “The Farm” Camp Peary under the tutelage of Colonel Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), who judges that meek little Chas. doesn’t have the killer instinct. He can’t shoot either unless it’s at point-blank range in front of a paper target. Undeterred, Charlie sneaks away to begin his mission in earnest.
He winds up in several corners of Europe outsmarting the agency, yet with Henderson on his tail every step of the way to catch and reason with him. One by one, Heller tracks down the people responsible for his wife’s death, putting them in no-win scenarios until he reaches the arms dealer who pulled the trigger (Michael Stuhlbarg). There is a big finale on the high seas where the two have an existential chat, but it’s not as tense as the previous couple of traps the terrorists find themselves in.
The most memorable for me was the first one, where Heller traps a female part of the group, an Armenian intelligence officer (Barbara Probst), in a glass cage during a routine physical. She needs to be mindful of her health since she is deathly allergic to certain flowers, and Heller, realizing this, pumps pollen into her box through a vent to coax information out of her. Set pieces and ensuing chases like this one held my interest more than the ones the trailer gives away.
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The Amateur is a decent thriller and a sharp one, too, in a lot of ways. However, it’s also one of those films that’s bizarrely quantifiable as one that I liked more while I was watching, and that doesn’t stick with me as strongly afterwards. Moreover, the part of the film I liked the most, and that stands out the best, is Malek’s performance.
He is a little deadpan as Heller, in what may be a channeling of the cold analytical autism of Ben Affleck in The Accountant. Still, I was wrapped up in his journey as he closed in on each target, outsmarted and misdirected federal agents trying to stop him, and as he tried to outrun Fishburne. That strategy doesn’t always work, as eventually the two end up sitting at a bar.
Henderson/Fishburne thinks he can talk Malek/Heller off a ledge, but the latter is only buying time to go out with a bang.
While I probably make it sound like Fishburne is a big deal in this movie, he isn’t actually in much of it at all, and doesn’t pop up at the climax. He has one last scene at the end with Malek, though it’s strictly a light cameo to wrap up his plot thread on a positive note. The same goes for Jon Bernthal. Despite his appearance in the trailer, he’s not in the film very long and could’ve been cut altogether.
Rachel Brosnahan has a similar problem. A little like Julia Garner in Wolf Man, Amateur is a weigh station along her road to Superman. She will probably make a great Lois Lane, but there isn’t a lot about her as the wife to indicate that. Brosnahan is a presence in the film, for sure, although in the most abstract spiritual sense. When she appears, it’s usually in a flashback or dream, making her into a wraith or spirit guide to keep her widower husband going.
Honestly, that sums up The Amateur quite nicely; in and of itself, this film is like a phantom obscured by other, bigger releases. It’s not a bad movie, but it doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel with spy thrillers either. Instead, it relies more on the star power, current and future, to sell a decent premise that could work just as easily on streaming in a post-Prey world.
The Amateur
PROS
- Rami Malek
- It's a remake that's easily better than the original
CONS
- People hoping for more Rachel Brosnahan, Jon Bernthal, and Laurence Fishburne than they get might be disappointed
- The trailer gives away too much, starting with the crumbling glass pool
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