Rami Malek can do “smartest guy in the room” with the best of them, but he isn’t particularly well served by The Amateur (2025). A spy thriller based on a Robert Littell novel, this one was also adapted back in 1981 — a more effective version, in my view. Malek plays Charlie Heller, a bookish CIA cryptographer with an unadventurous streak that amuses his world-traveling wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan). Sarah’s business trip to London ends in tragedy when she is kidnapped and summarily executed by terrorists. Charlie wants the Agency to go after the perpetrators, but is stonewalled by higher-ups Moore (Holt McCallany) and Horowitz (Danny Sapani), who aren’t about to let a lowly analyst dictate operational matters. In response, Charlie engineers blackmail against his corrupt superiors in order to put himself in the field and exact his revenge personally.
I do like the basic concept of The Amateur: thrusting a smart but unthreatening desk officer into danger and forcing him to rely on his smarts and resourcefulness to get the job done. It’s a nice change of pace from the tired trope of indestructible, infallible superspies invariably saving the day. But this adaptation makes nods to that idea without fully embracing it. He may not be a killer, but he’s way too competent and confident in other ways. The revenge plot in straightforward, and the scenario isn’t given much depth by an underwritten core romantic relationship (which, worse, is a waste of Brosnahan). The packaging is professional, if a bit tonally monotonous, and there are well placed, first-rate supporting players (Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Laurence Fishburne, Julianne Nicholson, and Michael Stuhlbarg). On the whole, though, The Amateur is competent but rather ordinary spy fare.
