‘The Amateur’: Revenge of the Nerd In a Serviceable Espionage Thriller

Dorks turn deadly in The Amateur, a serviceable espionage thriller with an admittedly novel gimmick: what if an assassin is too much of a wimp to pull the trigger? If you’re a broken-hearted tech whiz with an appetite for international vigilantism, you find work-arounds. Like dumping pollen on someone with allergies. Or exploding a 16-story-tall glass sky pool with the swimmer still in it. Life hack! Think Revenge of the Nerds, but with a body count. Or a Geek-Squad Dr. Phibes.

Rami Malek leans hard into his patented socially-awkward rizz as preternaturally gifted CIA cryptologist Charlie Heller, devastated after adorkable but honestly-out-of-his-league wife Sarah Horowitz (Rachel Brosnahan) gets killed in a London terrorist attack at St. Pancras. His bosses relay their sympathies, but don’t seem to care too much about tracking down the culprits. So he does his own sleuthing and—thanks to ridiculously triangulating all the audio and video recordings from nearby CCTV’s, cell phones, geriatric hearing aids, baby monitors, toy walkie-talkies and who the hell knows what else—is able to generate a near-perfect 3D recreation of the crime scene, complete with hi-res images, crystal-clear sound bites, and sourced identities for the villains. Sure. By the way, they have delicious European bad-guy names like Horst, Gretchen, and Mishka.

THE AMATEUR ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: James Hawes
Written by: Ken Nolan, Gary Spinelli
Starring: Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Michael Stuhlbarg, Julianne Nicholson
Running time: 123 mins

Coincidentally, Charlie’s top-secret online-only text-bubble informant Inquiline (Caitríona Balfe) just dumped a bunch of heavily encrypted files into his lap. Which leads to a feverish sequence where Charlie sequesters himself in a SCIF-type closet and hacks the .pdfs to reveal boldfaced words like “Drone Strike” and “Suicide Bomber.” Uh-oh! The classified documents implicate his director Frank Moore (Holt McCallany) in overseeing renegade extralegal covert activities that force mission creep in sensitives areas around the world. So Charlie confronts Moore and uses the highly compromising intel as leverage into letting him kill his wife’s murderers himself.

 “You’re not a killer,” people keep telling Charlie—especially world-weary Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), tasked with giving him a crash-course in lethal espionage. Charlie’s rushed CIA training gives him the basics while proving how out of his depth he is. Moore, not happy about being blackmailed, is looking for ways that Charlie might “accidentally” die while learning how to kill. But after Henderson helps make him a new identity, Charlie sprints off with a bagful of fake passports and an axe to grind. 

The Amateur is a remake of a forgotten 1981 film with handsome John Savage as the nebbishly lead. The original has a love interest played by Marthe Keller, who pops up here in a cameo as a florist. But this new version is too busy looking frantic and globe-trotting to work on plot details. It’s one of those movies that explains a character’s brilliance by telling you an IQ score. Charlie’s is 170, by the way. He’s smart, okay? Look how quickly he can override any cyber-security systems! The film sets him up as a quasi-shut-in who never travels anywhere and whose Decryption & Analysis lair is a windowless office with a tasteful analogue stereo receiver. He’s also got a barn next to his rural house with a vintage Cessna plane that his wife bought him. Huh?  

“A puzzle for my puzzle,” says a gift note from Sarah. There’s a lot that’s puzzling about this movie. Or just not well-explained. Like how this mousy man is suddenly able to become an international man of mystery, jetting undetected from Marseille to Madrid to Istanbul to Prague, with quick stops in Romania and Russia. Or how he’s able to trick an arms dealer into buying missiles from him. He’s got an IQ of 170, all right? He’s a computer savant! Just go with it!

 There might be a sequel to The Amateur, since there are too many colorful supporting characters to ignore. Like Henderson as Charlie’s easily irritable spy-game sensei, Julianne Nicholson as the newly-appointed do-gooder head of the CIA, and Jon Bernthal as a chiseled broheim super-spy. There’s even a scene where Charlie and his dweeb friends are eating lunch at the CIA cafeteria and look longingly at Bernthal eating with the cool kids. What is this movie, anyway? Feels amateurish.