Starring Rami Malek (Night at the Museum, Bohemian Rhapsody, No Time to Die, Oppenheimer) and a solid support cast including Laurence Fishburne and Jon Bernthal, The Amateur is like 80 percent revenge thriller and 20 percent espionage movie. I saw the trailer for this and thought that it looked like a pretty cool concept. Plus, it had three actors in it that I really like. This though to me at least, is one of those movies that feels like it just came and went without much fanfare at all.
How to Download The Amateur
The Amateur was released on April 11, 2025. You can expect to be able to download or stream the film from Hulu or other digital platforms a few months afters its theatrical release. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. If you like xxxx, check out also his other films- film one and film two.
The Movie Review
The thing with The Amateur is that this is not a bad movie at all, but it is also not a great one either. I would say that it is a little above average and I think part of my problem was that they showed the coolest scene in the movie, in the trailer! No spoilers here, but Rami Malek’s Charlie has a very specific hit list of four people that he wants dead and you see two of them taken down in the damn trailer!
Character Breakdown and Plot Summary
Rami Malek plays Charlie, who works at the CIA as a tech guy who is pretty much a genius when it comes to code. As Charlie is a cryptographer, he never gets his hands “dirty,” but he wants to when his wife is killed in a terrorist attack. Charlie finds out who is responsible for his wife’s death, and he goes to his boss and blackmails him so that he can get the resources to find and kill those who took the life of his wife.
Mentor Dynamics and Emotional Conflict
This is where Charlie meets Laurence Fishburne’s Hendo. Hendo is an old pro, and he is teaching Charlie, but he tells Charlie that this will not work as Charlie is not a killer. There is a really weird scene where Hendo tries to prove this by getting Charlie to shoot him, but why would Charlie have shot him?
Intelligence Over Muscle: A Unique Revenge Approach
As Charlie is not like The Punisher who can go in and kick ass and take down an army all by himself. Charlie is going to have to use the skills that he does have to kill these people. The idea here is pretty cool and seeing Charlie use his coding skills and his smarts, as well as a couple of friends along the way, to complete his mission is neat. However, as I said, you see too much of this in the trailer.
Pacing Issues and Adaptation from Book
The Amateur comes in at around two hours and it feels like they edited this down to get it to that time. On one hand, I get it as perhaps the movie would have dragged if it were any longer. However, there are way too many characters who get next to no screentime so you do not know them or care about them. This is a movie that is based on a book and I wonder how much more fleshed out the characters and the story is in the book.
Final Thoughts on The Amateur
I would say that if you can watch this on one of your streaming subscriptions, it is worth a watch, as I have seen way worse. I came out of the theatre and my initial thoughts on the movie were “it was ok,” and that is probably the best way I can describe this movie. It was not bad, it was not boring, but it was not great either, and it only had a few exciting moments in it. Plus, as I have complained about multiple times, why show two of the characters’ deaths in the trailer???
