There’s a fine line between slow-burn and just plain slow… and The Amateur plants its flag firmly in the latter. Based on Robert Littell’s novel, this 2025 take tries to smuggle depth and emotion into a revenge-fuelled CIA thriller, but it forgets one critical component: momentum.
Rami Malek plays a CIA codebreaker-turned-reluctant-assassin after a terrorist attack kills his fiancée. Sounds intense, right? Unfortunately, Malek spends most of the runtime looking like he’s still decrypting the script. Brooding can be powerful; here, it’s just passive. He’s a brilliant actor, but not this kind of brilliant. The role cries out for someone with steel behind the eyes. Malek gives us screen-saver energy.
The film tries to go for a “what if a non-agent became 007” vibe, but it ends up stuck between Taken and a bad episode of Homeland. By the time the action kicks in *briefly* it’s already too late to care.
And that’s the tragedy: there is talent here. Laurence Fishburne is dependable as ever, even when the dialogue lets him down. Jon Bernthal glowers with the intensity of a man stuck in a better film. Rachel Brosnahan and Michael Stuhlbarg? Wasted. You can almost hear them wondering what happened to their character arcs during the rewrite.
James Hawes directs with all the restraint of a man afraid to break a sweat. For a film about rage, revenge, and international espionage, The Amateur is surprisingly polite. The story deserved grit, pace, and unpredictability. What it got was an oddly tepid tone that made me wish I’d watched this as a four-episode series. At least then the slow pacing might’ve made sense.
Verdict:
The Amateur wants to be a thinking man’s spy thriller, but it overthinks and under-delivers. Solid concept, strong supporting cast, but miscast lead and a script that mistakes lethargy for sophistication. It’s not amateur hour, it’s just the wrong show.
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