James Hawes’ The Amateur is a revenge thriller that swaps brawn for brains, and mostly benefits from that decision. This is not a movie about a man who suddenly discovers he can throw a punch like Jason Bourne. It’s about a man who very much cannot, and knows it.
Rami Malek plays Charlie Heller, a CIA cryptographer whose life collapses after his wife is killed in a terrorist attack. Malek leans hard into Charlie’s awkward intelligence, making him feel like a man more comfortable arguing with code than with people. It’s a performance built on restraint. His grief simmers rather than explodes, which makes his eventual descent into obsession feel unsettling instead of cathartic.
Opposite him, Laurence Fishburne plays Henderson, the agency’s grizzled operator tasked with either training Charlie or containing him. Fishburne brings weight and skepticism, grounding the film whenever it threatens to drift into implausibility. Rachel Brosnahan, as a fellow intelligence professional, injects warmth and moral friction into an otherwise chilly narrative.
Hawes directs with a clean, controlled hand. The film moves briskly but not recklessly, favoring tension over spectacle. When violence happens, it’s sharp and often uncomfortable, reminding us that Charlie is improvising in a world built for professionals. The European locations are handsomely shot but never fetishized, serving the story rather than distracting from it. Volker Bertelmann’s score pulses quietly underneath, more anxiety than adrenaline.
Watching an analyst weaponize his mind is compelling, yet the script occasionally shortcuts complexity to keep the plot moving. Some moral questions are raised only to be quickly sidelined, and a few twists arrive right on schedule. Still, The Amateur works because it understands its protagonist. It’s a revenge thriller for people who flinch at gunfire and trust spreadsheets more than fists. That alone makes it feel refreshingly human, even when it’s flirting with genre convention.
RHFC Rating: 7.5/10 🍿
