Director: James Hawes
Stars: Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany
By default you’d label James Hawes’ continent-hopping CIA movie The Amateur a thriller. It has espionage, double agents, terrorist attacks and multiple vengeance killings. And yet, thanks to a number of converging factors, it might be one of the least thrilling ‘thrillers’ I’ve encountered in all my years. An unsalted boiled potato of a film, as basic as they come, with no twists, seasonings or additives to a tried and tested formula, just that formula in its simplest, least challenging or surprising form. Other, marginally more ambitious films are made more interesting by its very existence. It’s a baseline of sturdy, workmanlike tedium. The filmic equivalent of a late-period U2 album.
America’s worst-best actor Rami Malek stars as CIA data technician Charlie Heller, a seemingly harmless pencil pusher living in imperialist harmony with his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan). That is, until she is one of two casualties in a London terrorist attack. Reeling from the loss, Charlie demands to be put out in the field as an active agent with weapons and tactical training, so that he can hunt down the five names responsible. His boss, Director Moore (Holt McCallany), laughs him out of the room. Charlie goes anyway. And while he’s a terrible shot and the thought of close-up violence repels him, he looks to turn his established techy skills – and some newly acquired explosive ones – to his advantage by staging some high-concept traps for his targets. It’s like if Jigsaw was a big nerd with no personality at all.
While Charlie’s exploits take him across western Europe to Turkey and then on to the Baltic, tensions escalate at home between Moore and his superior, Director O’Brien (Julianne Nicholson, wasted). These scenes amount to very little, however. Power plays with no pulse and little follow-through. Or the pair are framed together, scratching their heads over how Charlie’s proving so successful at his globe-trotting quest for revenge. Malek makes the man seem mildly surprised at his own aptitude, yet Charlie doesn’t really come up against much serious resistance, and most of his escapades go off without a hitch. Even the trailer-baiting sequence in which he detonates a rooftop swimming pool manages to be less enjoyably ridiculous in it’s fuller version. Like Mawes’ autopilot presentation, it’s slick and functional as opposed to anything emotionally resonant.
For all his rogue agent proficiency, there’s a wider sense that Charlie’s actions are a fly in the ointment, but not an altogether positive one. For the most part he gets better agents hurt or even killed, but his unwavering commitment to the memory (and sometimes ghost) of his wife is presented as more than enough to balance the scales again. An eventual showdown aboard a boat with Michael Stuhlbarg (phoning it in, seemingly aware that this one’s just a paycheck) doesn’t deliver much in the way of a satisfying payoff. Not because it skirts explicit or vociferous action, but because it comes couched in the same dramatic apathy that seems to cushion the rest of the picture. This is what I imagine AI cinema to turn out like. All the elements are there, but none of the humanity. Ironically, a far better name for this outing and Malek’s character would have been Mr Robot.
Malek is awful here, particularly at the start when he has some fleeting interactions with Brosnahan as his imminently doomed wife. The energy between the pair is flat and awkward, giving the unwavering vibe that they met on set that day. Malek’s slightly off-kilter acting style has served him better in previous roles where it occasionally made some sort of sense. Here it’s rather more puzzling, and because the bond between Charlie and Sarah isn’t played particularly well, it becomes a rote through-line on which to hang the remainder of the dramatic beats. Charlie’s avenging Sarah because he says so. Not because we feel anything about their connection. You’ll find a far thornier and more compelling interrogation of fidelity vs. patriotism in Steven Soderbergh’s recent firecracker Black Bag. With that film still doing the rounds, spending two hours with The Amateur feels like a particularly egregious folly.
It’s not a terribly made film. Competency exists in most aspects of the production. But it is a soporific one. I didn’t quite fall asleep – I wouldn’t have written a review if I had – but I frequently felt myself close to it. So be careful calling this one a thriller; you may unreasonably expect to find some thrills here.
The Lost Highway Hotel 