'The Amateur': Rami Malek was Jason Bourne with STEM Skills

Poster for 'The Amateur.' Photo by William Beavers.

Good afternoon, readers.

On Friday afternoon, April 18, I crossed 'The Amateur' off my watchlist. Rami Malek produced and led the film as a CIA employee new to the field. While I enjoyed Malek's character's intelligence and Volker Bertelmann's good score, I felt 'The Amateur' should've shown Malek's character using hand-to-hand combat.

Rami Malek and Rachel Brosnahan as Charlie Heller and Sarah Heller, respectively, from 'The Amateur.' Courtesy of 20th Century Studios. 

Malek played Charlie Heller, a mild-mannered CIA cryptographer with a lovely wife named Sarah, played by Rachel Brosnahan from 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'. But Charlie's quiet life ended when Sarah was killed on a business trip. Teaming with a blunt Colonel Henderson, played by Laurence Fishburne, Charlie is forced to take the role of a killer to find the people responsible for Sarah's murder.

One good part of 'The Amateur' was Brosnahan's character teasing Charlie's playing-it-safe outlook, such as how he wasn't ready to fly an airplane she got him for a birthday. This flirting could be a set-up for Brosnahan's role of Lois Lane in the upcoming 'Superman' film. 

Another was how Fishburne said, "I'm not your Uber driver," when Henderson and Charlie met. 

Laurence Fishburne as Colonel Henderson and Rami Malek as Charlie Heller from 'The Amateur.' Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

But the best parts were the scenes where Charlie killed two of the suspects without even pulling a trigger. The first target was killed getting hit by someone's car, but Charlie killed the second target by blowing up a high-level hotel pool by decompressing the air in its glass. Before said second killing, he evaded Henderson in Marseille by planting a bomb in the bathroom. He traveled to many European countries like Jason Bourne but got by like Felicity Smoak from the Arrowverse--with wits and technology. I guess after the COVID-19 pandemic, they found a way to make spy work a little remote, too.

Going back to Charlie's evasion, Henderson was chasing him because Charlie had bluffed about releasing classified CIA intel to the public. It was quite a confident bluff when he first said it. Nonetheless, Charlie was a clever man. Returning to my comment on Jason Bourne, Charlie was like the character in 'The Bourne Supremacy', trying to outwit terrorists and/or corrupt government officials when his loved one was killed, and no one did anything.

The other thing from the film I appreciated was the riveting score by Volker Bertelmann. I felt Bertelmann's use of strings and electronic music highlighted the poignant and adventurous scenes throughout the movie. It seemed similar to the work of Hans Zimmer's work in Batman movies. The film's use of computer graphics at the CIA and beyond made me feel like I was staring at both binary coding and 'Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol.' Thank you, Industrial Light & Magic, and other visual effects organizations.

I give the film a 7/10 for Malek's performance, occasional good jokes, similarities to prior spy/thriller films, visual effects, and good scoring courtesy of Volker Bertelmann. I just wish Malek was more physical when confronting bad people. 

I hope you readers will check 'The Amateur' out at your local theatre, and maybe read its original novel by Robert Littell.

Thank you.