Watching Rami Malek play Charlie Heller, a grieving CIA intelligence expert in The Amateur, it's easy to forget that the actor won an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2019).
Malek sometimes seems to be a different movie than the rest of the cast. That could have been a calculated choice because Heller's CIA colleagues consistently underestimate his abilities. We're repeatedly told that Heller, who everyone refers to with the diminutive 'Charlie,' lacks a killer instinct.
Maybe Malek's performance seldom clicked for me, but that's not the only problem with director James Hawes's revenge saga. The Amateur strings a series of improbable events together as it hopscotches the world in search of excitement.
The event that triggers all the commotion occurs when terrorists murder Charlie's wife (Rachel Brosnahan) while she's attending a work-related conference in London. Guilty about having declined an invitation to accompany his wife abroad, Charlie expects a full-throttle reaction from his CIA employer.
When his boss (Holt McCallany) dithers about why such a response won't be forthcoming, nerdy Charlie shocks his superiors by asking if he can be the one to kill his wife's murderers. He requests some hardcore training so he can hunt the antagonists responsible for his wife's death.
The CIA grudgingly agrees, hoping Charlie's inadequacies will help quench his thirst for revenge. Enter Laurence Fishburne as the officer assigned to train Charlie in the agency's darker arts.
As expected, Charlie proves ill-suited for a killer's role, but that doesn’t stop him from going rogue and taking off on his own. No longer willing to humor Charlie, the CIA sets out to stop him.
A low-credibility affair, The Amateur might have saved itself had it been able to wink at its intermittent preposterousness while jumping to London, Paris, Marseilles, Istanbul, and Russia.
In adapting a 1981 novel by Robert Littell, the screenplay takes too little time establishing Charlie's technical brilliance, giving him too few opportunities to win the audience over. And for a movie that feels longer than its two-hour and three-minute run time, the story often feels more sketched than developed.
Though undernourished, some of the supporting performances provide colorful touches. Jon Bernthal has a nice turn as a scruffy CIA agent who knows the ropes; Caitriona Balfe portrays the widow of a Russian KGB agent who helps Charlie; Julianne Nicholson signs on as head of the CIA, and Michael Stuhlbarg gives the finale some life as Charlie's chief adversary.
And, yes, some of the action clicks, notably Charlie's confrontation with one of his targets in a glass-bottomed hotel swimming pool constructed between two skyscrapers.
Overall, though, The Amateur unfolds like a potentially intriguing conversation to which you listen but don't fully connect. I half wondered whether the movie was leaping from one location to another in hopes of finding a much-needed spark.
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