The Amateur

The Amateur Review

As the quality of cinema continues its steep 20-year decline, one genre that seems to have held on the longest, though certainly far from unscathed, has been the spy thriller. This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, arguably more than any other style of film, espionage lends itself to thrills, drama, and excitement.

The Mission: Impossible and James Bond series are prime examples (though the latter has fared worse than the former over the years). However, there have been other, smaller-scale creative successes as well. Last month’s Black Bag, while a box office flop and not perfect, proved that there are still creatives out there who understand the assignment and can produce intriguing and well-written films that don’t require special effects budgets the size of a small country’s GDP to tell an engaging story. Although it’s not quite as good as that film, The Amateur stands as a dim beacon of light in an otherwise very dark year for cinema.

Starring Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as a cerebral and somewhat socially awkward genius who works as a CIA cryptographer, The Amateur attempts to put a new spin on the saturated genre by placing an “amateur” (get it) into the hero’s role. Indeed, that’s been done before, though it’s usually with a cartoonish contrivance that montages the character’s way to over the top super spy (member Melissa McCarthy’s Spy? Yeah, I barely do too). Refreshingly, The Amateur attempts to remain grounded in something closer to reality.

The Amateur’s action set pieces are mostly believable as things that could happen in real life, and the technobabble and technology also seem reasonable. Likewise, while super-genius protagonists are often portrayed as able to reason out the villain’s moves with superhuman prescience, and this film does offer up a limited number of instances of this that stretch credulity, for the most part, it keeps Malek’s character seeming authentic.

The diminutive Malek’s character (5′ 7″ maybe 125 – 135 lbs) isn’t the physical match of experienced fighters many times his size, nor does he exhibit a meta-human capacity with guns. What he does have are a particular set of skills, an IQ approaching 200, and motivation. No stranger to playing a troubled computer genius thanks to his time as Elliot Alderson in Netflix’s Mr. Robot, Malek also manages to nail the subtleties of a man whose vast intellect places him on the edge of society. However, the strength of his conflicting emotional vulnerability and burning desire to balance the equation does more to hold the film together than any other aspect.

Malek’s consistency is especially impressive when one considers the inconsistency of The Amateur’s direction and story. His Heller (the name of his character) makes some incredibly stupid decisions for the sake of narrative expediency rather than because they make sense, and several other even less intelligent ones because someone behind the scenes wasn’t clever enough to come up with more imaginative scenarios worthy of someone with a 170 IQ. In one particularly egregious scene, outside her door and in an open stairwell, Heller breaks into a target’s apartment while loudly playing an instructional video on his phone to guide him through the lock-picking process. The strange part? He already has all the tools the video recommends, suggesting he’s watched it before. Yet, despite being a supposed genius, he can’t recall the three or four simple steps to pick a lock? Fine—maybe nerves are getting the better of him. But then why not wear headphones? He uses them in other scenes.

This is only one example of multiple simple situations that defy all logic and make it seem very likely that writers Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli got very lucky with Black Hawk Down and American Made (respectively).

Another troubling aspect of The Amateur, all of its secondary characters suffer from paper-thin depth and atrophied development, and several character setups are given wet paper bag payoffs. Both Jon Berenthal’s and Laurence Fishburne’s characters are distractingly wasted, with shockingly little screen time between them or a distinctive purpose for spending the money on hiring such recognizable faces. Narratively, their respective characters feel as though they are meant to fill the same role. It left me wondering if something behind the scenes caused a last-minute recast while budget constraints limited the possible number of reshoots.

It’s ten or fifteen minutes too long to praise the pacing, some secondary characters don’t make any sense, and the overall impression it gives is that a very different and better film is lying on an editing room floor somewhere. However, it’s interesting enough, and Malek does such a great job that The Amateur qualifies as quality date night entertainment.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Estroianage

• A couple of female characters, namely the new director of the CIA and a
  Spoiler

  Russian spy
  , feel tacked on.
  • The awkwardly exposited and repeated explanations of how the
    Spoiler

    the Russian spy was taught by her now-dead husband to do all of the things that he did,
    lead me to believe that her character was initially written as a man and then lazily and, dare I say it… amateurishly swapped.
  • Neither of these characters plays a massive role, and their gender doesn’t make them into superheroes, or give them an excuse to be self-righteous. So, I didn’t mark the Woke-O-Meter down much for it.