Rami Malek is likely to be somewhere far down the list when it comes to any casting agents idea of an action star and that’s certainly the case in ‘The Amateur’. His looks are far more akin to the stereotypical desk jockey computer geek that he plays here as Heller a cryptographer working for the CIA who waves his wife off to a business conference in London. So it’s something of a bombshell when his superiors call him into the office to tell him that his wife has been killed in a terrorist attack in London. But when his bosses tell him to leave it to them to track down her that gang of four terrorists responsible for her death he soon finds that, like those who get their sexual kicks from key rings, he’s just being fobbed off.
Having realized this he blackmails his bosses to allow him to go after his wife’s killers himself pausing only for the bosses to let him get some training from ‘best in the business’ CIA trainer Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) who soon finds that his trainee’s gun skills are as ludicrous as one of the lines of dialogue that mentions the George Bush Centre for Intelligence ( surely an oxymoron that must have been referring to George Snr rather than George Jr). So what we have here is not a guns a-blazing action hero but an intelligent man using his knowledge skillset to despatch the four terrorist in a globe trotting thriller that sees him turn up in Turkey, Spain and Russia.
Based on the book by Robert Littell it sees Malek ideally cast in a thriller that’s far more about some not especially complex subterfuge than it is about action set pieces of which the best have been seen in the films trailer. There are some nice touches here though that includes an unexpected death for one of the terrorists that isn’t in the trailer and there’s a reliably good supporting cast that also includes Jon Bernthal and an underused Rachel Brosnahan. But it’s not without its plot holes – he gets into CIA high security computers with ease without immediately being caught by any internal audit and an anonymous contact he’s liaised with for years and never been able to identify and locate he now swiftly identifies and locates with ease.
The Amateur has all the makings of a franchise that’s different from the normal action hero akin to the Bourne films and this is an ideal starter for Rami Malek.
related feature: We ask director Luc Besson – Will there be a Leon 2?
related feature: Bohemian Rhapsody – REVIEW
related feature: We go to the The Amateur European premiere!
Rami Malek introduces The Amateur at the European premiere……
Here’s The Amateur trailer…..
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