REVIEW: 'The Amateur' has some things to learn about suspense

Rami Malek as Charlie Heller in The Amateur, directed by James Hawes.

Any good spy story should keep the audience guessing a little as we go along. We’re not experts in tradecraft, and we should be surprised every so often when a hero or a villain ends up a few steps ahead. You might even get a chill when a character reveals their mastery of some lethal skill or turns the tables in a clever way.

But there’s always a breaking point. If too many logical gaps or conveniences emerge, you’ve got a problem. There’s a fine line between a cool surprise and a twist that feels like it occurs because the plot needs it to. 

That’s especially true in a movie like The Amateur, which follows a wannabe secret agent named Charlie (Rami Malek), who we’re told isn’t cut out for field work. He’s a CIA cryptography nerd, good with computers (like a certain previous Malek role), who isn’t interested in the rougher side of espionage until his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) is killed by terrorists. Charlie handles his grief poorly, and decides to force his employers to give him the training he needs to get revenge. This man will literally become an international assassin rather than go to therapy.

There’s a persistent hand-waving going on here. How does Charlie bully his superiors into this? There’s some business about blackmailing his bosses that doesn’t really connect to the larger story beyond its function in the plot. How about staying undetected? Charlie waffles between being a ghost or very easy to find, and we’re never quite sure how many of his actions are a mistake or a well-orchestrated misdirection. In some scenes, he runs like a madman through the streets, but still doesn’t get caught. In short, Charlie’s skills are whatever the movie needs them to be in that moment, and you’d be forgiven for feeling a little manipulated.

Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) is very displeased with Charlie.

Even the ultimate fate of Charlie’s wife is left oddly ambiguous for most of the movie. The way her death is staged (we never see the actual moment the gun is fired or her body afterwards) it’s like the filmmakers were toying with revealing at some point that she survived. I half expected some kind of echo of Steven Soderbergh’s far superior spy film Black Bag, released last month, with the main character’s wife having a secret life of her own.

The supporting cast here is strong, even if their character motivations are murky. Holt McCallany is well-chosen as the CIA boss directing some shadowy operations, and Laurence Fishburne appears every so often to shake his head in disappointment at Malek. Most baffling is Caitríona Balfe as a Russian contact of Charlie. She’s said to be one of the most hard-to-find covert agents in the world, until she decides to help him out (for poorly explained reasons) and is tracked by their enemies almost instantly. Even Jon Bernthal shows up for a few scenes, seemingly teleporting in from a non-existent Amateur connected-universe TV show or something to exchange dialogue with Charlie and have no other bearing on the plot.

Ultimately, The Amateur wants to be a story about the double-edged sword of revenge, but it struggles as much as Charlie wavers when he holds a pistol. After Charlie works his way through his short kill list (mostly moments shown in the trailer), he finally faces off with the leader of the terrorists (another under-utilized actor, Michael Stuhlbarg). Their interaction is beyond weird, with both characters saying and doing things that don’t really fit with what we’ve seen up to this point. It’s a scene that seems crafted by test screenings, and there’s a distinct sense that the filmmakers would love to get a franchise out of this character if they can, no matter how little sense that makes. What would they call a sequel? The Professional is already taken. What’s the step in between? The Enthusiast?

The Amateur might work as passable entertainment for any espionage fan who’s already seen Black Bag and blown through Slow Horses and The Killer, but don’t expect a whole lot from it. You’re left with the impression that Malek and team still have some stuff to learn.

The Amateur gets two stars out of four.