The Amateur Review: James Hawes’ Deliberately Paced Revenge Thriller Features Rami Malek’s Engaging Performance
Before the Rami Malek version, I didn’t know there was a prior movie of The Amateur back in 1981. It completely flew off my radar, but I recently managed to watch the original version first, which starred John Savage (you may remember him most as one of the ensemble cast in The Deer Hunter) in Rami Malek’s role. It’s sad to say that the 1981 original, aside from the shocking opening scene, was mostly drab and plodding like it was made for television. It didn’t help either when John Savage’s performance was impassive and, dare I say, disappointingly wooden.
Interestingly, the 1981 version turned out to be one of the earlier efforts from executive producers Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna, two names synonymous with the once-dominating Carolco Pictures before the company sank into bankruptcy after the Cutthroat Island debacle. So, going back to the 2025 remake of The Amateur, which is itself based on Robert Littell’s novel of the same name, I was hoping the Rami Malek version could do a better job.
The good news is that the movie is in the good hands of James Hawes, predominantly a TV director for series such as Penny Dreadful, Snowpiercer and Slow Horses. But first, the plot: Like the 1981 version where the wife of the main protagonist was shot in cold blood by one of the terrorists in Munich, the same fate happens to Charlie Heller’s (Malek) wife Sarah played by Rachel Brosnahan, the actress soon to be seen in Warner Bros.’ big-budget gamble Superman as Lois Lane this July.
Except that the tragedy takes place in London during a terrorist attack. Her death has turned Heller’s (Malek) life upside down, who works for the CIA as an analyst. An introvert mainly bound to a desk job decoding sensitive and top-secret files in front of his laptop on the lower basement of the CIA headquarters, Heller is so devastated that he demands justice must be served. But CIA’s top-level management, led by Moore (Holt McCallany, in a solid supporting turn), the director of the Special Activities Centre (SAC), won’t be making this case a top priority. The only thing he can reassure Heller is that the CIA will get to the bottom of this.
However, this doesn’t sit well with Heller, who grows increasingly impatient with the CIA’s somehow wait-and-see progress. So, he takes his own initiative to find out whatever info he can about the terrorists. But there’s more when he discovers that Moore has secretly sanctioned off-the-grid operations, which indirectly caused his wife’s death. He uses the evidence as his leverage to blackmail Moore by putting him in a CIA training or he blows the whistle.
The subsequent training leads to one of the best scenes in the movie, thanks to the mentor-protege dynamic between Laurence Fishburne’s no-nonsense Colonel Henderson and the inexperienced Heller. Soon, it’s a globe-trotting mission of vendetta as Heller is determined to locate the terrorists who take him from London to Marseilles, Istanbul and the Baltic Sea. The mission, of course, isn’t something you will normally expect from a Bond or Mission: Impossible movie. Heller is neither 007 nor Ethan Hunt since his special set of skills has nothing to do with tactical combat and weaponry.
Even after he undergoes the CIA training, he doesn’t automatically turn into a quick-learning expert who can suddenly shoot with pinpoint accuracy and fight like a pro better than those who have been rigorously trained for years (thank god for that!). Instead, the training is mostly supplementary for Heller’s survival skills since he relies heavily on his technical MacGyver-style improv to take down the terrorists one at a time. In other words, don’t expect anything spectacular in its action set pieces, even though we still get the obligatory chases, shootouts and explosions.
But that doesn’t mean the excitement is completely void here, as Hawes’ assured direction is played to his advantage. The pace may have been slow, but deliberate enough to keep me invested in Heller’s journey. Hawes even doesn’t rush things to get to the revenge part as he takes his time detailing how Heller deals with the aftermath on top of grieving the loss of his beloved wife. The Amateur, of course, wouldn’t have worked if not for Rami Malek’s engaging performance. Casting him is the right move since he doesn’t have the traditional action-hero appearance, which proves to be integral to his everyman character of a socially awkward CIA agent who has no prior experience in field operations.
It also helps the earlier scene with Malek and Brosnahan share wonderful on-screen chemistry as husband and wife. Their moment may have been brief, but it displays enough resonance, which showcases how much they love each other. This makes her loss later in the movie feel palpable, forcing Heller to make a tough decision to avenge her death.
At the beginning of the movie, he is barely a risk-taker. Not even when Sarah tells him to drop everything and make an impromptu decision to join her on a business trip to London. But Heller is committed to his job, suggesting he prefers to play safe. With the subsequent news that Sarah is killed by one of the terrorists, Heller has to step out of his comfort zone and take matters into his own hands since the CIA isn’t much of a help.
There’s no doubt a sense of anticipation about how a guy like Heller can handle such a mission on his own. When he finally catches up on his targets, the mission is understandably plagued by a few setbacks that require him to improvise, which at one point, Hawes manages to slip in a subtle sense of humour revolving around a YouTube tutorial. Although the movie’s two-hour length does lag in some parts, James Hawes’ 2025 remake of The Amateur remains a significant step-up over the tepid 1981 original.
