‘The Amateur’ fumbles a bit, still scores a few points

“The Amateur” opens with Charles Heller (Rami Malek) laying out a tarp in his garage, littering it with what we would perceive as a box of scraps. But to him, these trinkets are all pieces to a puzzle, a broken plane just begging to be repaired. It was bought by his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) as a birthday present, the couple living in a cozy farmhouse just outside of Washington, D.C. Charlie’s high IQ and knack for challenges make him the perfect decrypter for the CIA, buried five floors deep and into the muck of U.S. foreign policy. He’s also the nerdy sort, the kind that sits at the lunch table with the rest of the brainiacs solving brain teasers while gawking over at the field agents who go out and get their hands dirty.

Those seeking adventure often find themselves in it, but never in the way they’d expect. For Charlie, that curl of the monkey’s paw comes when Sarah is killed during a botched terrorist hostage situation during her conference in London. The bosses at the CIA put the “greater good” over vengeance for Sarah, opting to let the terrorists walk for now in hopes that they’ll stir up the rest of the criminal nest. But Charlie can’t take the high road on this one, taking matters into his own hands through some convenient blackmail that unlocks an arsenal that would make Batman shiver.

Having already been unmemorably adapted for the screen in 1981, Robert Littell’s novel is probably a great read on an airplane. Director James Hawes, riding high after directing the entire first season of “Slow Horses” and the underrated Anthony Hopkins-starring drama “One Life,” maintains an engaging level of intrigue throughout his production. There’s a crispness to the proceedings as Charles hunts down the four responsible men one by one, taking him across various metropolitan areas in Europe.

While the story of a man calculatingly seeking revenge on the men who harmed his significant other closely mirrors that of 2023’s “The Killer,” Hawes is nowhere near the level of David Fincher. The satisfaction of a completed cycle never reaches the point it needs to, largely due to the silliness of the mini-climaxes. This is a ludicrous premise, but an interrogation through the threat of pollen and the pressurized destruction of a glass swimming pool takes things down a distractingly skeptical road. Even more ludicrous, albeit amusingly, is the concept of the CIA publicly admitting to wrongdoings on foreign soil. Based on all the headlines over the past few weeks (or months … or years), I chuckled as Julianne Nicholson stood up at the podium as the CIA director and preached American values such as accountability and honor.

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Hawes and his screenwriting duo, Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, never waver from the emotional core of the story. After Sarah’s death, the return of her suitcase and the routine nature of Charlie’s last conversation with her take on a whole new meaning. I mentioned earlier that the premise is ludicrous, but there’s never a moment where I doubt why Charlie convinces himself he needs to do this. Maybe it’s because this feels like a lateral move from Mr. Robot, but Malek’s casting is top-notch. He doesn’t have the presence of a traditional leading man, but a film like this – one that relies less on bullets and machismo – plays to his strengths.

James Bond and Jason Bourne are both in a corporate-induced hibernation for the moment, so a lower-staked espionage action thriller such as this flies pretty high at the moment. Along with Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag,” it’s a nice appetizer before Ethan Hunt makes everything go boom in a few weeks.

20th Century Studios will release “The Amateur” in theaters nationwide on April 11.

Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays, and more. He currently serves as the president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals both big and small. To view his entire body of work, you can visit his website and Instagram.

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