Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 3 minutes, Director – James Hawes
When his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered, CIA cryptographer and coder Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) sets out to get revenge on those who killed her, with multiple branches of his employers on his tail.
There’s quite a starry cast amongst the various players in The Amateur, yet with what they’re given to do it feels as if there may be quite a few details of various strands left on the cutting room floor. Not quite a 90s-esque thriller, or even ensemble, there’s quite a mixed bag as we follow the various stages of CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller’s (Rami Malek) revenge journey.
After his wife (Rachel Brosnahan – largely appearing in very brief flashbacks) is killed on a trip to London Charlie seeks training from his employers so he can kill those who murdered her. However, things don’t go well when he’s unable to use a gun or face a direct threat as it towers over him. When a plot to dispose of him after he discovers incriminating information about Holt McCallany’s CIA deputy director fails he goes both on the run from his employers and seeking out those he seeks revenge against using his own set of skills.
It’s at this point that the build-up which has already shifted once or twice shifts again with occasional scenes of Charlie using these skills as he faces those who took his wife away from him. The sequences are tinged with perhaps unintentional humour with the ways in which he tries to find information which will take him to the top of where he needs to go – trapping someone in a box which he’s funnelling pollen into to set off their allergies or depressurising the air between layers of glass in an infinity pool so that it shatters. These moments almost feel as if they’re making up for the lack of this kind of action in Jason Statham’s recent A Working Man, but feel so far apart and lacking a cheesy one-liner to properly give them an entertaining hit beyond mere amusement.
As a whole the film passes by with its various shifts in the narrative, as Charlie’s globetrotting becomes more of a chase with various branches of the CIA sending people after him – including Laurence Fishburne’s Robert Henderson, the man initially set to train Charlie to kill. There are some nice interactions between the two here and there, including one in a dirty Parisian bar, and indeed the chase aspect in general has its moments which help to speed things up and move them along. But it just marks more clearly the various stages of all the build-up, and indeed everything else that’s happening in the film. It’s not that there’s an overstuffed narrative, just that the film quite obviously moves from point to point with a bordering-on-chaptered nature.
Things are generally put together with little trouble and they move along well enough, if not always being thrilling or fully engaging. Malek’s central performance has its moments during quieter scenes, largely not when facing a direct threat in-person, and as a whole the ensemble around him works, even with those who are given very little to do. It feels somewhat of a standard tech thriller. It’s unlikely that much of it will be remembered long after watching, or to some extent shortly after doing so either, but for the time it’s on there’s just about enough within the slightly staggered course of The Amateur to keep it largely afloat.
With a cast and pacing which feels as if quite a bit has been cut out, The Amateur moves along well enough and provides some likable moments once its cat-and-mouse strands break out, but doesn’t quite realise the ridiculousness of some of the revenge aspects it suddenly breaks out into.
Just A Little Bit Random 