“The Amateur” skims the surface of what has worked in spy thrillers of the past, never finding its own rhythm, identity, or personality. A common phrase in criticism is “style over substance,” but while watching this misfire, I would have killed for a little of the former. The foundational problem with a film like this is that the lack of personality forces the viewer to consider the plot, which is a load of utter nonsense. Suspension of disbelief is so much easier when a film gives you something else to hold onto, which is just not the case here, leaving viewers stuck with shallow characters and ludicrous plotting.
Imagine what Tony Scott would have done with this story of a data analyst who becomes an international assassin. Then go watch “Spy Game” instead.
Rami Malek is ineffective as a CIA data analyst named Charles Heller, whose wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan, given one of the most thankless “dead wife” roles in a long time) is taken hostage and murdered while on a trip to London. Heller knows more about the strings being pulled behind the scenes in an international incident like this, recently discovering that a U.S.-led drone attack was changed into a suicide bombing to sell it to the world. He takes this knowledge and essentially blackmails his superiors, including Holt McCallany as the CIA Deputy Director and Julianne Nicholson as his boss. He demands the intelligence and training to take out Sarah’s assassins on his own, and he’s assigned Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) for the former. Our decoder-turned-Bourne heads overseas just as the CIA realizes he’s gone fully rogue and chases him themselves. Can he hit his targets before the government that trained him finds him?
On paper, it sounds like a promising project, which is probably what drew an over-talented cast that also includes Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, and what’s basically an extended cameo by Jon Bernthal, who looks like he stumbled over from “The Accountant 2” for a scene or two and stumbled back. (Not a slight on the always effective Bernthal, only that he’s over-qualified for what is basically a non-role, but, then again, so are Nicholson, Brosnahan and Stuhlbarg.) The emotional current of “The Amateur” should flow through Malek’s Heller, someone we’re clearly supposed to see ourselves in. How far would you go to avenge your wife’s murder? Could you turn your skill set into one that takes lives? These questions should produce heat—tension and emotion—but they’re all framed in such a clinically boring film to experience. This is a film in which an ordinary guy becomes an international murderer, and yet it has no heartbeat, taking a clinical approach to chaos.
Malek and director James Hawes never put us in Heller’s shoes, keeping us at a distance through every choice they make, from Malek’s quirky performance to a color palette so depressingly underlit that it made me want to scream. Forget blue; the color scheme for this one is “gloomy.” Everything is shot so blandly, a choice that calls attention to the film’s cheesy dialogue, truly thin politics, and inconsistent characters. It’s a lifeless endeavor that’s lacking even in action sequences, and the one shoot-out & quasi-car chase ends in such a ridiculous manner that it produced my biggest laugh of the movie—Heller is hunted by a dozen or so armed men who are on his tail until they’re just…not.
The truth is that we don’t notice things like that in the name of entertainment. We ride with Jason Bourne and James Bond because they’re charismatic enough to force us to do so. That is just not the case here, leaving us to question every inane twist and turn. And wonder why no one can turn on a light.
