A CIA data analyst blackmails his way into the field in search of revenge following the murder of his wife in The Amateur, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This globetrotting espionage thriller boasts a captivating performance from Rami Malek and slick direction from James Hawes, but also a tangled mess of a plot that fails to connect on multiple levels.
The Amateur is adapted from the 1981 novel by Robert Littell, which was turned into a feature film starring John Savage and Christopher Plummer the same year. Littell was a prolific writer of spy fiction, and his novel and the earlier film, largely set in Prague, was a satisfyingly convoluted spy thriller in the tradition of Three Days of the Condor that nevertheless failed in its revenge movie plotting.
This new version, which has been kicking around for at least 20 years (back in 2006, Hugh Jackman had been attached to star as the data analyst), had the opportunity to fix the flaws of the earlier film. Instead, and despite a thick gloss of professional filmmaking sheen and at least a couple memorable moments (that pool sequence is a real wow), it doesn’t work as a spy movie or a revenge thriller.
In 2025’s The Amateur, Malek stars as CIA analyst Charlie Heller, whose loving wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) is killed in a London terror attack. While his superiors in Langley—Deputy Director Alex Moore (Holt McCallany) and Caleb (Danny Sapani)—are sympathetic, they’re also strangely aloof when Charlie asks to be involved in the hunt for the terrorists. Even after he helpfully identifies them all himself, and tracks down the first one (Anna Francolini) in Paris. (Nice nod: Marthe Keller, who starred as a Czech informant in original film, cameos as the Parisian florist).
So Charlie, no field agent but a meek office drone, devises a plan that will quench his thirst for revenge: he’ll blackmail the CIA into training him to be a ruthless assassin, and sending him on a one-man mission to Europe to pick off the terrorists one by one. Laurence Fishburne plays Henderson, the officer tasked with turning Heller into a killer—and eliminating him once the CIA uncovers the blackmail plot.
It’s a good setup, and worked well enough in Littell’s novel and the 1981 film, in which the particulars of what Charlie blackmails his superiors with are vague and inconsequential—until a climactic reveal. Here, it’s spelled out from the very beginning: before the plot is even set into motion, Charlie has received documents from an anonymous contact that implicate Moore in false flag operations that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of American allies.
Hmm… thousands, you say? Yes, these CIA guys are bad news. Oh, what’s that—and they’re in bed with the terrorists that killed Charlie’s wife, a fact that he digs up early on? Surely, The Amateur must be about Charlie blowing the whistle on these goons, especially with benevolent CIA Director O’Brien (Julianne Nicholson) and field agent The Bear (Jon Bernthal) on board for this version of the film.
Frustratingly, The Amateur ignores the top-tier villains it has established—and gives Nicholson and Bernthal nothing to do for the entire film—as it sends Charlie on his revenge mission across Europe. We never have a rooting interest in his cold-blooded revenge, and by the time he makes it to the final terrorist, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, we don’t even care if he pulls the trigger.
But Malek is effortlessly engaging as the analyst, and the character is a little better written this time around, making this version of The Amateur somewhat interesting as a Munich-style contemplation of the nature of revenge. If only the script, credited to Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, didn’t muddy the waters with the addition of the convoluted mass-casualty conspiracy subplot.
Where this version of The Amateur fails to live up to the source material is in common sense. In the book, which predates the internet, Heller takes photographs of his incriminating evidence and stashes the negatives in an arcade game at a diner. Here, with all the technology at his disposal… he takes the incriminating evidence—that has been sent to him digitally, mind you—and burns it onto a CD, which he then stashes in a jukebox at the local bar. When the CIA goons find the CD, they don’t even question the fact that this evidence surely exists elsewhere, and immediately put out the hit on Heller.
Director Hawes made the first season of Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, as well as the excellent Nicholas Winton biopic One Life, which filmed in Prague (The Amateur had also registered with the Czech Audiovisual Fund, but ultimately did not shoot locally). The quality of presentation here might distract you from the shortcomings in the script, but if you’re following closely, this one is a real letdown. 1981’s The Amateur was no classic, and there was an opportunity here to improve on its shortcomings, but this remake only deepens the flaws and fumbles the themes that once made the story intriguing.
