Rami Malik: Dreadful when playing original characters.
Rami Malik: Dreadful when playing original characters.
The Amateur, directed by James Hawes, is out now.
Rating out of five: ★★
With its airport novel storytelling and TV movie acting, The Amateur wastes what might have been a neat premise.
Rami Malek (an Oscar winner for impersonating Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody but dreadful when playing originalcharacters) is Charlie, a basement-dwelling computer nerd working in government intelligence, whose wife Sarah (Mrs. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan) is shot dead by terrorists on a visit to London.
Ignoring his shady bosses’ instruction that he should leave it to the experts, Charlie disappears from the office to undergo training in combat and weapons so he can find Sarah’s murderers and exact bloody revenge.
There’s entertaining plot potential in turning a decryption and analysis expert into an adept killer. With his gormless face and light characterisation as someone nonspecifically neurodivergent (like Ben Affleck’s person with autism in The Accountant, Charlie doesn’t understand humour), he does have a few moments that impress. But the clever techie stuff he employs to get payback is best not spoiled here, since these scenes are the highlights of an otherwise bland and unaffecting movie.
The supporting cast is also disappointing. As Charlie’s CIA boss, Holt McCallany, once excellent as an FBI profiler in Mindhunter, is evidently corrupt from the outset and utters banal lines like, “We need to keep a lid on this,” as Charlie wreaks havoc.
Laurence Fishburne faxes in his performance as a retired secret agent who attempts to mentor Charlie, although Irish actor Caitríona Balfe delivers some tender moments as a Russian spy.
The Amateur tries to evoke Jason Bourne in sending Charlie to Paris, Marseilles and Istanbul, but Malek is so miscast that we neither see ourselves in his shoes, nor sympathise with his poorly acted propulsive grief.
Everybody loves an underdog vigilante, but not in such an underwhelming film.
