The Amateur

Yet another revenge thriller motivated by a dead wife, The Amateur at least has in its favour that its source text is 50-years-old. That's significantly newer than the weirdly regressive A Working Man, but where that had Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer moderating, this finds ways to be more sexist, and, if anything, more nihilistic.

The book it's based on is by Robert Littel, he's previously had work adapted for television, but neither Legend (starring Sean Bean as various undercover identities) nor The Company (with an even longer list of recognisable names). Littel's one of the lesser known but much loved figures of spy literature, a genre unto itself. John LeCarre attributed much of his success to being an alternative to Ian Fleming. There's a coldness in Le Carre that's different to that of Bond, and a different coldness again in Littel's work. His first novel, The Defection Of AJ Lewinter is even more talky than Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but it has enough uncertainties in it that it's less Dr No than "to whom it may concern."

Director James Hawes has form. He's directed several episodes of Slow Horses, a tv show based on the work of another cult spy thriller author, Mick Herron. Herron's work is in places more akin to murder mysteries, though unlike the Jack Reacher series it's more consistently cynical. I do wonder if some of that cynicism has rubbed off here, as while Littel's work knows the value of realpolitik, Herron's recurrent protagonist, Jackson Lamb, is fuelled by a cocktail of prawn biryani and nihilism.

Nothing quite as exotic here. The novel is adapted by Gary Spinelli, who penned the similarly CIA-centric American Made and Ken Nolan who's still best regarded for 2001's Black Hawk Down. Their updates include adapting a 1970s tale of Cold War through Czechoslovakia to the shadowy world of counter-terror and then even further into conspiracy with the notion of 'false flag' attacks. Conspiracy thrillers and conspiracy thinking make surprisingly uneasy bedfellows.

The Amateur is far more intent on being in the mode of 'professional revenge' films (your Accountants, Beekeepers, Bricklayers, the whole gamut of Working Men going back at least as far as the original of The Mechanic. This takes one of its set-pieces from that, or at least owes a debt that no amount of change of detail can quite wash away. It's a novelty to have Rami Malek in this sort of role, but he's meant to be an analyst, not Jason Bourne.

Rachel Brosnahan as the motivating dead wife does have more to do than most, she's not stuffed into a refrigerator and left to cool. As a spiritual presence for her avenging widower she's somewhere between a moral compass and a smartwatch, reminding him to sleep, to eat. His other shadow is played by Laurence Fishburne. He's no stranger to special forces, after all it was as Mr Clean that he helped Willard get up-river all the way back in the Apocalypse Now. He's also no stranger to revenge, though this role owes more to Rambo's Trautman than John Wick's Hoboken Hobo King. He's part of a shadowy intelligence apparatus and like most of these affairs it seems that many of his skills are better directed against internal enemies of the state than other clear and present dangers.

Hawes has a fondness for getting really close on Malek, unsurprising really when you've an actor of that calibre but at times it feels a little odd. The flashbacks do a lot to show a gentler side to a slightly twitchy signal analyst but it's unclear how much of that's retained from the source. Littel's in that difficult middle ground for cult authors where his work's known but not readily available. While I'll try and track down copies of works where I can, The Amateur's above my price cap, even secondhand. That our protagonist drives a Saab means something different now than it would have then, but restoring a plane as a hobby indicates a set of skills that the film doesn't so much build upon as ignore. There are some good supporting performances among the baddies, and John Bernthal's appearances as 'The Bear' (a nod to the kitchen show as well as his Russian expertise) are welcome interludes. Despite the body count on the way to the ending there's something approaching a peaceful resolution, and not (as Tacitus said, quoting Galgacus) making a desert and calling it peace.

The levels of reference and recursion get a bit complicated. It was a former director of the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, who referred to parts of the trade as "a wilderness of mirrors." LeCarre made his mark as an alternative to Fleming, Littel as an alternative to LeCarre, but when Fleming's stories changed their tone, as in A Quantum Of Solace, then like the physics it coincidentally shares its name with it becomes something strange, if not charming, full of spin and opposition. The roots of the word 'amateur' are in love, but it's grief that initially motivates. Those with an appreciation for the art will see opportunities to do something different that are not taken.

Whatever the film's roots, it's become another entry in a litany of films that make something definitely derivative of professions. One day we might see The Zymurgist ("trouble's brewing...") but I doubt we'll ever get that far along the alphabet. There's not much to decode in The Amateur. If it has a moral it's that desire for revenge can change a man, but that's a tale at least as old as the horse it rode in. The film doesn't feel amateurish. It's much more professionally polished than nonsense like Blackbird but it doesn't profess much either. Despite the quality of its cast it's too much in the mould of other films. The balance of duty and revenge has been weighed before, and better, heck one of the best of them has four jobs in the title. As a spy story it's not great and as a revenge thriller it's not new and between them there's not much else to say. If you're going for the love of it then you might benefit, but otherwise you're better spending your time and money elsewhere.

Reviewed on: 03 May 2025