We were overdue for an update here. Alfred Hitchcock built a lot of his films around “the wrong man” country hopping spy thrillers, where our hero was ill prepared to engage in spycraft. With the rise in surveillance technology, it was a matter of time someone tried to do a “hacker as a spy” movie built around something similar. The Amateur is nowhere in Hitchcock’s league, but really tries to be, and gets an A for effort at least, a rarity these days from the big summer movies.
Charlie Helller (Rami Malek) is one of those tech geniuses working for the CIA we think we know. He’s content working in the basement bunker in Langley, happily married to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), an international business traveler. Scared of travel, Charlie declines to go with Sarah to London on her latest visit. Coming into work one morning, Charlie’s boss CIA Deputy Director Alex Moore (Holt McCallany) shows Heller a video of his wife being kidnapped, and murdered near King’s Cross station. This sends Charlie into a vengeful tailspin, demanding to find the 4 people responsible for Sarah’s death…which Director Moore isn’t exactly excited to hear.
I think I forgot what it’s like to see a big movie in a real place. If there’s green screen used in The Amateur, it’s only for little bits here and there. When Charlie jets off to London, or Paris, we’re actually there, walking through real streets and inside real buildings. That level of investment elevates the movie above most of the streaming equivalents of this type, and really helps put you in Charlie’s head as he goes about his mission. Rami Malek is doing movie Mr. Robot, which is mostly good casting. He can’t quite get to the emotional levels the movie needs him to get to, coming off more like Ben Affleck in The Accountant. Thankfully director James Hawes surrounds Malek with great action movie vets like Laurence Fishburne and Holt McCallany to tether the movie back to reality.
Because Charlie is an amateur, the action doesn’t have to be incredibly flashy; in fact, it’s better if it isn’t. And generally that’s what happens here. We’re less in fight choreography mode and more like quasi heist movie stuff, with the big mystery of The Amateur not the spy double crossing but how a weenie hacker is going to complete his mission. The end result at least is logical, and mostly practical. We’re mostly in the fun part of the spy experience: the surveillance section, as Charlie formulates a plan from what he learns about his adversaries. And when its time for the action to become the juice, explosions are real (no cool guy stuff from Charlie, he’s flinching as he walks away), and the bigger set pieces are really cool to look at and draw the expected “oohs” and “aahs” from the audience. I definitely had one or two gasp moments from the finales of The Amateur’s big sequences, a testament to Hawes and Malek’s dedication to not just rely on CGI for the movie to work.
The Amateur just wants you to have some fun. If you keep those expectations right there, you’re gonna have a great time. You might wonder though how Rami Malek won an Oscar. When’s the last time an Oscar winner couldn’t actually play sad in a movie? That’s the power of Freddy Mercury I guess. It doesn’t really matter.