THE AMATEUR : Tuesday 15th April 2025

I saw the M Rated 'THE AMATEUR' earlier this week at my local independent movie theatre, and this American vigilante action spy thriller film is Directed by James Hawes and is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, which was previously adapted into a Canadian film that same year with John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller. James Hawes previous feature film making effort was 'One Life' in 2023, although he has Directed numerous TV series since the early 2000's, including multiple episodes of 'Doctor Who', 'Merlin', 'Penny Dreadful', 'Black Mirror', 'Snowpiercer' and 'Slow Horses'. The film was released in the US last week too, has so far grossed US$35M from a production budget of US$60M and has garnered mixed or average reviews. 

Here then, Charles 'Charlie' Heller (Rami Malek, who also Co-Produces here), is a brilliant yet deeply introverted CIA cryptographer, who as the film opens up is seen carefully unwrapping parts to restore an old Cessna single prop plane that was gifted to him by his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan). Later that same day Sarah departs for London where she is attending a four day conference. She asks him to join her, but as usual he declines saying that he has too much important work to do at Langley. At the CIA's Decryption and Analysis division, Charlie has befriended a field agent nicknamed 'the Bear' (Jon Bernthal), and an anonymous source codenamed 'Inquiline'. 

Inquiline sends Charlie highly classified and heavily encrypted files that reveal Special Activities Centre Director and Charlie's boss Alex Moore (Holt McCallany) altered politically-motivated drone strikes as suicide bombings. Later that evening Charlie tries calling Sarah but he only goes through to her voicemail. The next morning Charlie subsequently is brought to CIA Director Samantha O'Brien (Julianne Nicholson), who informs him that Sarah has been killed in a terrorist attack in London. Charlie is disbelieving until he sees raw footage displayed on a TV screen in her office downloaded from a security camera in close proximity to the hotel where Sarah was shot execution style.

A grieving Charlie soon afterwards presents his own findings to Moore and his CIA Deputy Caleb Horowitz (Danny Sapani). After an arms deal gone wrong, four assailants took Sarah and others hostage, killing her before escaping. Charlie identifies the suspects, Belarusian criminal Mishka Blazhic (Marc Rissmann), South African ex-special forces operative Ellish (Joseph Millson), former Armenian intelligence officer Gretchen Frank (Barbara Probst), and elusive mastermind Horst Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg), Sarah's killer. However, Moore and Horowitz insist they are working to take down Schiller's entire network, and as such tell Charlie to keep out. Determined to avenge Sarah, Charlie confronts Moore and Horowitz with his incriminating orders, which caused hundreds of civilian and allied casualties. Initially Moore brushes off the evidence laid before him, but Charlie then threatens to leak the information to the CIA Director and then the news channels. Charlie demands the available CIA resources to personally hunt down the four terrorists.

And so Charlie is sent off to train with Col. Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) at Camp Peary. The gun-shy Charlie excels at bomb-making, but Henderson lays it out clearly on the line that he is simply not capable of killing anyone. Meanwhile, Moore and Horowitz mobilise a team of CIA operatives to search Charlie's home, office and anywhere he may have visited recently. They discover a CD he hid in a bar's jukebox, but realise he was bluffing when the CD is examined. Henderson is ordered to eliminate Charlie, who bugged the files he left in Moore's office, but he had already vacated his room and was on his way out of the country on a flight bound for London and then a train to Paris, using the fake ID documents he had been given by the CIA.

Charlie tracks down Gretchen Frank in Paris, following an on-line lock-picking tutorial to break into her apartment. He discovers Gretchen's appointment at an asthma and allergy clinic and takes a gun, but cannot bring himself to shoot her when she returns to her home. The next day he buys up all the lilies at a street florist shop, and he traps Gretchen at the clinic in a hypobaric chamber that he fills with the pollen extracted from the lilies. Charlie demands to know Schiller's location, but is unwilling to let Gretchen die and releases her. The pair fight, but she escapes to the street, followed in hot pursuit by Charlie, and is fatally struck by a passing van. Taking Gretchen's phone, Charlie catches a bus to Marseille where Henderson corners him in a bar, but he sets off an explosion in the mens rest room and escapes. 

He requests Inquiline's help and is smuggled to Istanbul, where Inquiline (Caitriona Balfe) reveals herself as the Russian widow of a murdered ex-KGB officer, having taken his place as Charlie's source some six years prior. They trace Blazhic to a luxury hotel in Madrid, while O'Brien learns Moore has sent Henderson after Charlie, and sends her own operative.

In Madrid, Charlie confronts Blazhic as he swims alone in the hotel's rooftop infinity pool perched sixteen storey's up between two towers. He has rigged scuba equipment to decompress the air between the pool's sheets of glass. When Blazhic refuses to answer any questions, Charlie at the press of a button shatters the glass and sends him plummeting to his death. He is nearly apprehended once again by Henderson, who is attacked by O'Brien's operative. In the ensuing struggle, Henderson is shot but kills the operative, allowing Charlie to escape once more. Horowitz realises that Charlie is communicating with someone by spotting an earpiece he is wearing in CCTV footage from the hotel. He tracks down Inquiline and sends a strike team from the CIA Field Office in Istanbul, and Inquiline is killed in a hail of rapid gun fire as she flees with Charlie in a car.

Charlie tracks down Ellish in Romania under the pretence of selling him missiles and traps him with an improvised explosive device that has a remotely activated motion sensor, forcing him to reveal that Schiller operates from a ship on the Baltic Sea. He takes Ellish's phone and leaves him to die in the explosion. Charlie arrives in Primorsk to spy on Schiller's operation. Bear confronts him in a dock side cafe, but Charlie refuses to end his personal vendetta, and so he leaves Charlie pondering his fate.

Charlie is captured and is taken aboard Schiller's ship, coming face-to-face with Sarah's killer. Schiller offers him a loaded gun and the chance to take his revenge. Standing over Schiller with the pistol pointed squarely at Schiller's head and within point blank range, he drops the gun and takes a seat. Charlie reveals that he just had to keep talking long enough as he hacked the ships control systems, steering it to the Gulf of Finland where Schiller and his crew are taken into custody by Finnish Police and Interpol. O'Brien goes public with her revelations about Moore and Horowitz who are later arrested for their unsanctioned operations. After being visited by a recovered Henderson, Charlie is seen taking his restored Cessna plane for its first flight.

With 'The Amateur' Director James Hawes has here delivered a fairly predictable by the numbers spy action thriller that is straight out of the Bourne, or Bond or M:I playbook, with locations spread far and wide, well choreographed action set pieces, but a plot that leaves a lot to be desired. That said it is still entertaining enough and Malek does his best at his portrayal of the CIA computer nerd thrust into a world that he is ill equipped to handle but nonetheless his very particular set of skills at the keyboard enable him to win the day over those bad terrorist types. It has a strong supporting cast with Holt McCallany and Laurence Fishburne as dependable as ever, but Jon Bernthal is wasted with about as much as three minutes in total of screen time out of a total run time of just a nudge over two hours. You can either choose to watch it at your local big screen Odeon or wait to catch it via streaming - either way you could do worse!

'The Amateur' warrants three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-