Rami Malek as Heller in 20th Century Studios' THE AMATEUR. Photo by John Wilson. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
THE AMATEUR
Rated PG-13, 2 hour and 3 minutes
Directed by: James Hawes
Starring: Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, Laurence Fishburne, Caitríona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jon Bernthal
Technically, THE AMATEUR does what everyone should ideally want to do with a remake: Take a middling, long-forgotten studio property starring a leading man with cardboard-like charisma and transform it into a big budget studio property with modern spycraft starring a popular Academy Award winner. Yet this reimagining of a vigilante thriller doesn’t have the same fire in its belly as its early 80s predecessor, considering its villains aren’t as much cold-war rejects as they are a freezer-burned reheating of generic baddies and its aesthetic pull is television caliber at best. Director James Hawes’ picture plays like an amateur hour throwaway relic of a past 20th Century Fox era – and it’s an assembly of unremarkable goods.
Bland marrieds Charlie (Rami Malek) and Sarah Heller (Rachel Brosnahan) have the perfect beige life in the Virginian suburbs of Fairfax County until it’s ripped away. A day after they part ways for work, with Sarah traveling to London for a conference and Charlie headed to his CIA gig decrypting top secret documents, a group of terrorists storm Sarah’s hotel, taking her hostage and leaving her dead in the process. Grief proves overwhelming to Charlie, causing him drown in his anger working through the seven stages. However, the pain and shock of the traumatic event births a newfound vigilantism to guide him through his depressive state when he commits to investigating this horrific crime.
Having recently uncovered an off-the-radar Black Ops cover-up, Charlie blackmails Director Frank Moore (Holt McCallany) into sending him through a crash course in mercenary training so he can ferret out the ruthless killers. He intends to hold four folks accountable for his wife’s murder: asthmatic Gretchen Frank (Barbara Probst), night swimmer Mishka Blazhic (Marc Rissmann), arms smuggler Lawrence Ellish (Joseph Millson) and trigger man leader Horst Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg). Under the tutelage of tough-as-nails Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), the rookie learns how to shoot a gun and assemble IEDs. However, the walls close in on Charlie sooner than expected, leaving him to embark on his European quest quickly, barely armed with enough street smarts to survive.
The idea of remaking this story for these contemporary tech-reliant times is better than the execution of the remake itself. Hawes, along with writers Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, embraces the worst aspects of the original like its glacial pacing and sloppy storytelling. Though moments of levity are genuinely funny (like learning to picking a lock from a YouTube tutorial), there are notable lulls in narrative energy in between Charlie’s kills. The rookie also makes the dumbest mistakes, even for a novice. Any propulsive action found within the elaborately-staged set pieces gets lost in the mechanics. Instead of streamlining the proceedings, they over-complicate it, adding new plot elements and character designs that don’t amount to much in the way of twisty thrills or power plays. There’s a “you don’t want this life” pep talk by Jon Bernthal (who plays Charlie’s bearded, bedraggled field agent pal nicknamed The Bear) that transpires too late to hold the proper impact and intrigue it should.
Perhaps the most glaring item left unchanged from the 1981 adaptation of Robert Littell’s novel is that our adventure begins by fridging the wife so her otherwise boring, drip of a husband can initiate his hero’s journey. Utilizing this outdated, cringe-worthy trope is regressive, no matter how many flashbacks (copious!) there are to better establish Sarah as an integral presence in Charlie’s unwavering mission. What does change in terms of the female characters is equally maddening. Instead of coming into her own power by film’s end as the 1981 film shows, here Charlie’s informant/ grieving widow of an ex-KGB agent, Inquiline (Caitríona Balfe), is dealt short shrift. Her existence comes courtesy of two men’s arcs, beginning with her dead husband’s legacy and closing on helping Charlie. Plus, things just sort of transpire for Julianne Nicholson’s CIA director overseeing and being led on by Director Moore. She isn’t allowed to be proactive at all.
Because the material isn’t up to snuff, Malek’s performance isn’t nearly as finely calibrated as it should’ve been. Instead of showing a gradual evolution of the character’s confidence surveilling and delivering his form of swift justice, the direction he’s given has him scattered all over the place, jittery in some scenes and calmly collected in others. While it’s admirable that the fight choreography isn’t polished, it becomes tiresome to see him repeatedly fleeing. Similar to the original, the aesthetics are nothing to write home about. It’s aggressively grey and black, from the production and costume design to the cinematography and color-timing.
Slightly reminiscent of THE RHYTHM SECTION as far as awkward, vengeance-fueled heroics go, THE AMATEUR suffers from amateurish direction, hollow sentiments on the nature of vengeance as well as a surprising lack of ingenuity.
Grade: 2 out of 5
THE AMATEUR opens in theaters on April 11.
