Director: James Hawes
Cast: Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitrona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg
Screenplay: Ken Nolan, Gary Spinelli
123 mins. Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, and language.

It’s been over two decades since The Bourne Identity changed the landscape of action films, but there are still imitators trying to jump on the bandwagon. At first look, The Amateur seems like one of these imitators, and while its style is cold and clinical, there are a few worthwhile differences to note that change up the formula, often benefiting the finished film and enabling it to stand on its own.

Based on the 1981 Robert Littell novel of the same name, The Amateur follows Charles Heller (Rami Malek, Oppenheimer), CIA cryptographer and desk man, who learns that his wife was killer in a London terrorist attack. He quickly discovers that the agency is not interested in helping him find the killers as it conflicts with their other priorities, so Charles blackmails his higher ups into letting him learns the trade of a field agent in order to exact vengeance on his wife’s killers. He is The Amateur.

This is the case of an espionage film that takes a ludicrous premise and makes it work because it’s the kind of vengeance tale we can see ourselves doing in the event we lost a loved one and knew that the very people capable of solving it have chosen not to. It’s a simple story, a very simple idea, one that takes the typical action hero and replaces him with a clever and calculating man who is irreversibly broken and then setting him loose. It feels akin to the simplicity of the John Wick films, though it takes a lot of visual cues from the Bourne films.

Director James Hawes (One Life) mines the story for a lot of excellent sequences, though I’d argue that the screenplay shortchanges a lot of the brainpower that Heller uses by simply not including much of it. We are shown frequently what he knows but not often enough how he knows it. We are shown the exacting of his vengeance but not the setup. As viewers, we want the HOW, we need the HOW. Otherwise, it feels as though the screenwriters simply didn’t know how to accomplish these tasks, so they hoped we wouldn’t notice either.

For the character of Heller, Malek’s performance was of two minds. He portrays Heller’s sadness quite well (a particular moment springs to mind where he receives his deceased wife’s luggage and embraces it in the hotel room, knowing it’s the last time he’ll smell her scent), but I didn’t find the passion and anger in him to be coming to the surface, which would have to be necessary to drive him to make such intense and irreversible choices.

Thankfully, he’s bolstered by an incredible supporting cast here, including Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) as his handler and trainer, a man who understands Heller’s quest and is forced to hunt him, and Holt McCallany as the dubious CIA Deputy Director who refuses to hunt the killers for his own personal agenda. We even get a small but satisfying turn from Jon Bernthal (who deserves more and larger roles) as an agent saved by Heller in the past. I don’t believe that Robert Littell’s character appeared in any other novels, but if there were a franchise based around this film, I’d love to see more time with these secondary characters.

The Amateur does a fine job of making its more ludicrous elements believable, and James Hawes directs the hell out of the action. While the screenplay is pretty light on HOW Heller is able to accomplish some of his deeds, The Amateur manages an entertaining enough tone and some truly memorable supporting players.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe