Directed By James Hawes

Starring – Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Bernthal

The Plot – A CIA cryptographer (Malek) manages to blackmail his agency into training him to let him go after a group of terrorists who killed his wife (Rachel Brosnahan).

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, and adult language.

The Amateur | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

There have been a million revenge thrillers made since the inception of The Punisher comic books, but what makes “The Amateur” stand out from so many of them are the unique touches to its concept that were surprisingly refreshing to the genre, allowing it to stand out from the three or four of these that we seem to get every year. For starters, I love a movie that is committed to technology, with some of the best detection camera software on the planet, which helps Malek’s character tap into a limitless pool of accessibility while uncovering his masked assailants, all the while enacting a mental stimulus from the character that helps to make up for some of his flaws in shooting accuracy and physical stature. If you loved Malek’s character from “Mr. Robot”, you’ll find the transition here as Heller to feel effortless, spawning a intellectually dominating advantage over his adversaries in ways that undoubtedly make it impressive to see how far one man can get on his own when driven by the unshakeable desire of vengeance that plays quite compelling towards Heller’s character study. As can be expected from these movies, our protagonist is inescapably haunted by the memories of his wife, and as a result the editing techniques gets to show off some subtly naturally effortless transitions that make her spontaneous arrival to current day sequences involving Heller in solitude feel believably tangible, even despite our initialized knowledge of her untimely murder during the movie’s opening ten minutes. The action is also meticulously utilized throughout a two hour run time, but when it arrives attains the right kind of urgency and vulnerability factors that emphasize the danger and intensity of its sequences. Admittedly, the shaky handheld camera designs do leave a bit more to be desired with the clarity of the presentation, however Hawes gripping direction constantly enacts a riveting unpredictability to both the choreography and resolutions that always demands and maintains audience investment, even with some of these resolutions spoiled by a zealously revealing trailer. In particular on the fight choreography, I love that Heller’s inferiorities towards physicality and inflicting pain and suffering on adversaries doesn’t lead to him feeling supernatural in the fighting capacity, instead forcing the character to think abruptly spontaneous while on his feet, with regards to overwhelming antagonists who are always bigger and angrier than that of our protagonist, yet never lacking in the finality department, as this film’s budget spares no cent towards an immensity of magnitude to the many foreign landscapes that make up the movie’s setting. On top of this, the film is blessed by an elite ensemble of charismatic A-listers that make the most of their limited screen time, even if this is undoubtedly Malek’s showcase for the taking. While some of Malek’s previous roles didn’t quite feel right for the mesmerizing actor, he feels right at home here as Heller, commanding his captivating screen presence with an underlining layer of grief and devastation that continuously feel like it could swallow him whole at any second, yet with an equally entrancing layer of mystique to his interactions with antagonists that really force you to question the sanity of his design, with an almost nervous tick that emphasizes the personal matters that he’s unloading during their final moments. Malek certainly doesn’t abide by the physical imposition of those action stars of yesterday, but he does provide a disarming candor to his various deliveries that makes him feel every inch of the threat that he imposes, and the performance provides a second life for Malek, almost in ways that will historically typecast him for the next decade of roles that he signs off on. If there was a secondary impact to Malek’s Heller, it’s undoubtedly Laurence Fishbourne’s Henderson, who as a bit of a moral wild card himself, periodically shows up to throw a speed bump in Heller’s road to vengeance, and while intensity and menace have never been two ingredients that Fishbourne has lacked in over forty years of his career, the turn here proves he isn’t exactly slowing down anytime soon, making the most of his limited minutes with ample physicality that still garners the fight in the old dog.

NEGATIVES

Despite “The Amateur” being a film that I thoroughly invested in and enjoyed, it is far from a perfect film, particularly in the hinderances of its screenplay, which don’t always utilize the most grip for its momentum in the air of its overwhelming potential. For starters, the film requires an inordinate amount of suspension of disbelief and conveniences that periodically squandered the grounded believability and overall accessibility that made this a refreshing watch in the revenge thriller subgenre. While I can go along with Heller being technological genius who is able to tap into literally any system, I find it equally difficult to believe his accessibility to setting up these intricate means of devastation towards his adversaries, simply on the physical and secretive lengths of it alone, and with each set piece essentially growing bigger and bolder than the last, the logic of what it took to pull off such a feat feels strained at best, especially considering the very same cameras and technology that he utilized towards locating terrorists at any given moment somehow can’t be used to track him down after quite nonchalantly evading a bombastic crime scene that he entirely helped manufacture. Beyond the bridging of occasional ridiculous, the film’s ending also fell a bit flat to me personally, even as it evaded a telegraphed character study where predictability might’ve been the most satisfying means of expression. Without spoiling anything, I will say that Heller does eventually catch up to the architect of his wife’s killing, but unfortunately for a scene that should’ve taken his rage to another level, the end result is actually quite tame and underwhelming for a movie featuring some gruesome brutality, sending this film out on a bit of a deflated whiff during the sequence that should’ve felt most personal for Heller. Finally, at two hours long, the script lacks any kind of palpable urgency away from action sequences to make it feel like an effortlessly breezy engagement for its audience, particularly with such a repetitious structure and convoluted investigation that definitely felt like it could’ve used another cut inside of the editing room, in order to produce a tighter consistency to the film’s many spread out climaxes. For my money, there’s a section involving the subplot of an anonymous source that Heller comes into contact with, that, despite the appeal of relating and interacting with someone else defined by tragedy, drowns on for a bit longer than I would’ve preferred, and while it’s only one example, it’s one of few scenes that definitely should’ve been compressed for time, in order to attain a far more aerodynamic 105 minute final cut.

OVERALL
“The Amateur” might not entirely reinvent the wheel towards revenge thrillers, but the refreshing instances towards characterization and capability make it the endearing kind of formulaic deviation that lives and thrives by its own rules. Despite a two hour run time that tests the patience of its audience, and an overall requirement to check your disbelief at the door, the film is a rampantly riveting theatrical kind of experience made whole by Rami Malek’s enigmatic turn as a reeling spouse with a particular set of skills that equally values intelligence and vulnerability more than a secret past, helping to solidify him as the next big action star who nobody, audience or adversary, saw coming.

My Grade: 7.3 or B-