The Amateur Review: A Star-Studded, Globe-Trotting Snore

“But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career.” That’s a line from the 2008 hit Taken, memorably performed by Liam Neeson while speaking on the phone to a man who has kidnapped his character’s daughter, and it arguably kicked off what has become a dominant subgenre in action films in the near-two decades since: the unassuming killer protagonist. In the case of Neeson’s Bryan Mills, his enemies and audiences were meant to underestimate him as an aging, loving father, but the basic premise has taken many different forms since then.

In 2025 alone, we’ve already seen two other examples of this. In February, Ke Huy Quan played the archetypal lead in Love Hurts (a lovable realtor with a dark past as a gangster), and Jack Quaid got his shot last month in Novocaine (likable assistant bank manager turns badass thanks to his inability to feel pain). Neither movie is great – the latter definitely better than the former – but what can at least be said is that both films had an interesting and unique hook to hang on. Director James Hawes’ The Amateur, on the other hand, has no hook to speak of, and the end result is that it is an absolute snore.

Academy Award-winner Rami Malek is the lead of this one, playing an introverted analyst who thirsts for revenge following the murder of his wife, and it’s a film that is lacking in both flavor and energy. It has 60 minutes of plot stuck in a 123 minute package, its action hanging on four mediocre set pieces (half of which have been heavily featured in the marketing), and it’s a persistent challenge to fend of the yawns as the protagonist slowly moves around Europe and you wait for anything interesting to happen. A great ensemble cast is wasted in a movie that has no idea what to do with any of them.

The movie based on the novel of the same name by Robert Littell, Malek plays Charlie Heller, a basement-dwelling decryption expert for the Central Intelligence Agency whose life is shattered when the woman he loves (Rachel Brosnahan) is killed by a cadre of terrorists (Michael Stuhlbarg, Barbara Probst, Marc Rissmann, Joseph Millson). Devastated and alone, he uses his resources and training to find the people responsible, but direct retaliation is ruled out by his superiors (Holt McCallany, Danny Sapani) due to larger scale operations.

Heller, determined and his life otherwise devoid of anything, opts to blackmail the CIA with evidence of a cover-up operation he conveniently discovers a couple days prior. His lone demand is permission for his vendetta and what ultimately amounts to a few hours of training with a veteran agent (Laurence Fishburne). While staying one step of his employers, who are looking for any opening to shut him down, he travels around the world hunting for vengeance.

The Amateur has nothing interesting to contribute to the underdog action thriller subgenre.

In an underdog action thriller, deception is an important ingredient. In Taken, Bryan Mills is a retired dad, but he is a consummate ass-kicker. In Love Hurts, Ke Huy Quan’s Marvin Gable is sweet and amiable, but he has a killer rage that he keeps bottled up. In Novocaine, Jack Quaid’s Nate has long lived a sheltered life because of his congenital condition, but not feeling pain means losing a key motivation to stop fighting. This important ingredient is absent in The Amateur. Charlie Heller understands and is repeatedly told that he has no killer instinct and no advanced physical skills, which render him a relatable protagonist, but there is also nothing special about him that makes him a compelling character.

It can’t be said that the guy isn’t intelligent or doesn’t have a knack for computers that allows him to access basically any information the plot requires – but that can also be said about the CIA informant with whom he connects and partners in the movie’s second act. His methods of tracking, interrogating and killing entirely lack dynamism or build, preventing the thriller from ever being effectively thrilling. A perfect example (that is heavily featured in the trailers): Heller confronts one of his wife’s killers as he swims in a rooftop pool bridging two buildings, but there is nothing clever about Heller’s plan and no tension generated with the antagonist’s fear in his precarious circumstances (neither in the script nor the cinematography); the guy denies being who Heller is looking for, a button is pressed, and the pool shatters and the guy plummets to his death.

I suppose one could say that Charlie Heller’s hook is that he is above being bloodthirsty… but that just doesn’t jibe with the entire premise of a revenge story, and it means that the movie actively avoids giving the audience what it is seeking from The Amateur.

Don’t make the same mistake I did: don’t expect The Amateur to be a spy thriller with twists.

Also helping absolutely nothing is how bizarrely linear the whole story is. Fair or unfair, there is an expectation that a movie about the world’s most famous spy agency would feature some big twists and turns that you never see coming, but that’s a spice that is left on the shelf. I kept waiting for some kind of reveal about the reason why Heller’s wife was killed and/or some extra nefarious detail about operations being run by the CIA that intersected with the plot, but those revelations never come. Everything is as it seems at all times, and the film becomes more and more underwhelming as you realize that.

The Amateur is the kind of movie that gets outfitted with pull quotes like “star-studded” and “a globetrotting adventure,” which aren’t so much positive marks as they are statements of fact. To be sure, there is a lot of talent on screen and the production did plenty of on-location shooting, but in would have been smarter to invest more of the effort in crafting an effective story. It’s neither smart nor exciting; it’s just boring.