Film Review - The Amateur (2025)

Kelaru & Fulton rating: ★★★

Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins

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This film is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell and was first adapted into a film in that same year.

The premise remains similar in both versions: Charlie Heller (Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody, Mr. Robot) is a CIA cryptographer working quietly in the background. He is the kind of person who is whip-smart but comfortable with anonymity, happy to be one of the unsung heroes. That changes when his wife is murdered in a remote European country and his superiors prove ineffective or unwilling to pursue the case. Charlie decides to take matters into his own hands.

It is worth stating early on that this is not a Jason Bourne-style action film. Please manage your expectations accordingly.

The first half of the film, which I found to be the most enjoyable, focuses on Charlie’s personal mission for revenge. He bribes his superiors to allow him to train with the CIA so he can carry out the mission himself. It is not that the agency is incapable, but rather that they want to dismantle the entire network responsible, not just the three people directly involved. For Charlie, that is not good enough. Given his IQ of 170 and experience working at the highest levels of CIA intelligence, it is fun to watch him constantly outmanoeuvre his enemies, like a chess master playing against amateurs.

Charlie is clearly not suited for fieldwork. No matter how much his trainer, Henderson (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix, Contagion), tries to teach him, it is clear he is not a killer. When the moment comes to pull the trigger, he simply cannot do it. I appreciated that the film stayed consistent with this. Charlie may be determined, but he is out of his depth in direct combat. He struggles to interrogate suspects, cannot handle hand-to-hand combat, and when people die as a result of his actions, he does not move on with a night of drinking or escapism.

What he is good at is hacking and numbers. He uses these skills creatively to go after his wife’s killers while simultaneously avoiding his former CIA employers who are trying to bring him in.

As the film progresses and the stakes are raised, the plot begins to stretch credibility. When top CIA officials decide to track Charlie down, they fail to revoke his access to CIA systems and tools, which would have immediately rendered him ineffective. It feels like a major oversight and a missed opportunity to force Charlie into more inventive problem-solving. On the other side, the villains he is pursuing are disappointingly underdeveloped. We do not see a pattern of truly threatening behaviour from them, nor do they mount any particularly clever defence once they realise they are being hunted.

The film tries to juggle two threads: Charlie fending off the CIA and his pursuit of his wife’s killers. Unfortunately, it does only a passable job of generating tension in either storyline.

With the director of Slow Horses behind the camera, I had hoped for a tighter and more grounded spy thriller. Something with less action and more clever strategy. Still, the performances are solid, and some of the dialogue is sharp, making this a decent watch. It is just not a film I expect to remember a few months from now.