The Amateur rejigs the revenge thriller by trading an action hero for a twitchy introvert

The Amateur, the latest murdered-wife revenge thriller, reimagines the genre by asking the question, “What if the husband wasn’t a cold-blooded killer?” Hardly innovative but occasionally refreshing, the film often finds itself pulled between two worlds: an introspective examination of grief and the big boom clichés of contemporary action cinema. Rami Malek, more at ease here than he was as Freddie Mercury, plays CIA agent Charles Heller, whose wife (Rachel Brosnahan) dies in a terrorist attack in London. After realizing the higher-ups have their own reasons not to pursue justice, he does his best to find her murderers, despite his lack of killer instinct.

Based on a novel by Robert Littell, The Amateur is about a quiet character who prefers puzzles to guns and spends his life behind a computer screen. A man of few words, Heller has a twitchy countenance that doesn’t inspire confidence, but might activate a maternal instinct in some audience members who want to shield this lost lamb from the world’s harm. Leaning into his strengths as a performer who can telegraph introversion, Malek stands as an unlikely action-hero thrust into an unlikely adventure.

The cast is almost sickeningly overqualified for the material and, in some ways, the film is almost worth watching to see Michael Stuhlbarg, Laurence Fishburne, John Bernthal, Holt McCallany and Julianne Nicholson give above average work for what ends up being an ultimately average thriller. They bring a certain gravitas to dialogue scenes, emphasizing what goes unsaid as much as what does, while also bringing an unusual gentleness to quieter moments that seem atypical of a mainstream spy thriller. 

The writing continually questions Heller’s quest for revenge with a rather nuanced view on grieving and loss. It paints, for Heller, a life no longer worth living as it’s beset by emptiness. The enormity of these emotions and the tender moments it invites into his life, despite the explosive nature of his revenge, feel at odds with the big-picture plot points that demand outrageous set-pieces — which are sometimes comically over-the-top given the more sensitive aspects of the film. Reconciling the two energies often feels like fitting a square peg into a round hole. While more serious in tone than another recent spy thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, the commitment to drab greyness counterintuitively undermines the nuance and symbolic gestures offered by the spy genre. 

As a result, the film seems to lack momentum. There’s not enough playfulness to sell some of the more outrageous sequences, such as a torture-by-pollen incident that comes in the film’s first half. It also means that the layers of smokescreens and conspiracy don’t come together to draw us into the central self-deception that fuels Heller’s ill-advised campaign for revenge. It’s a movie that can’t quite work its way around to the right level of subversion, indulging a little too often in generic expectations while also departing tonally a little too far to create something cohesive or thrilling. 

It’s rare to talk about a mainstream action movie and point out that its greatest strength is its location scouting and production design. From The Amateur’s earliest moments, with domestic scenes unfolding in a picture-perfect white panel home, to globe-trotting adventures in London, Marseille, Madrid, Istanbul and Russia, the film has an unusually vibrant atmosphere. Wide angles shot by cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Control, The American) elevate the material — if the movie has anything, it’s a carefully considered sense of space. Packed with careful details that accentuate the lived-in feel of the world, the film is unusually beautiful amidst the barren landscape of overt artifice and garishness that’s typical of movies made on this scale. Careful attention to location sets The Amateur apart from the overabundance of high-budget films that feel like they’re shot on TV soundstages and parking lots. 

The Amateur doesn’t quite achieve what it sets out to do, but still has enough moments to make it interesting. Heller’s brief sojourn in Istanbul, where he meets a previously anonymous colleague, leans into a surprising tenderness that hints at a version of this film that would have been far more effective. As it stands, it’s not the worst way to spend your time at the movies, but will likely be more forgettable than not. ■

The Amateur opens in Montreal theatres on Friday, April 11.

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