The Amateur: review of the film starring Rami Malek
Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne and many others are the protagonists of The Amateur, the spy thriller in theaters on April 10, 2025. There is an image that describes quite accurately what The Amateur, the action/spy story directed by James Hawes in Italian theaters from April 10, 2025, for The Walt Disney Company Italia, tries to do: go with the flow and, at the same time, drive the wrong way.
The film tries to rewrite the rules of the game while adhering punctually to the conventions of the genre, or rather, genres, stealing from espionage the atmosphere of suffused moral ambiguity, a pinch of (winter) exoticism and over-the-top missions, and from action the pulsating tension and a stripped-down discourse on feelings; love, regret, anger, revenge. It has a remarkable cast, starting with the outstanding Rami Malek and continuing with Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Holt McCallany, Michael Stuhlbarg, Julianne Nicholson and Jon Bernthal.
The Amateur: The future of the spy genre is in its past
There are some clarifications to be made. The most important is that the film is the adaptation of the 1981 novel by Robert Littell “The Amateur” – it is also the original title, and explains the mechanism better than The Amateur – which had already been adapted for the cinema in the same year of its publication.
The keystone of this version, for Gary Spinelli and Ken Nolan, screenwriters, and especially for James Hawes, director, is to transport the geopolitical universe and moral arsenal of the novel - full Cold War, a century ago - into the contemporary world, safeguarding its spirit and philosophy to make it a spy story deferential to illustrious comparisons but ready to take the liberties necessary to refresh the model.
The path chosen by the filmmakers - and the choice does not entirely pay off - is to innovate while respecting tradition. Constraints of the novel aside, you can see from the incipit, a very Hitchcockian dynamic and, moreover, with a protagonist immersed in an unusual situation from which he can escape by counting on his skills (as an amateur, in fact) and the trust of a few, generous, strangers, aren't we faced with the most classic of international intrigues?
Charlie (Rami Malek) is a brilliant, shy, introverted decoder. He is a phenomenon in his work, but in the basements of Langley, the CIA headquarters, no one pays attention to him. Better yet, they don't consider him worthy of attention, as happened to Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (1975).
Charlie is married to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), who dies in London, victim of an attack plotted by Sean Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg). Charlie, destroyed by grief, wants revenge, but the agency is hesitant. Having sensed that there is something dirty involving the boss, Alex Moore (Holt McCallany), counting on the indirect support of director Samantha O'Brien (Julianne Nicholson), Charlie blackmails the agency and gets himself sent to a training course for super spies directed by the wise old Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne).
On the mission, he is helped by his collaborator Inquiline (Caitríona Balfe) and, perhaps, his colleague Jackson O'Brien (Jon Bernhtal). In a nutshell: an ordinary protagonist – more or less – dealing with an extraordinary situation (North by Northwest), who works as an outsider (Jason Bourne) with incredible gadgets and missions (007) in a climate of heightened internal paranoia (Three Days of the Condor) while having fun tearing apart the credibility of the CIA (Hopscotch, a 1980 comedy with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson). It's all very derivative, but it's part of the game. Looking to the past to (re)build the future.
A coming-of-age story and a story of deformation
A fun way to tell The Amateur: it's a James Bond film shot from Q's point of view. James Hawes' film is simultaneously a coming-of-age story and the story of a deformation. Speaking of deformation, it's that of a protagonist accustomed to dodging the game of the world and living while maintaining a healthy, but not very credible, safety distance.
A binary man, who initially thinks in terms of absolutes – black/white, good/evil – and then matures swimming in the nuances, in the ambiguous gray of life. Growing up becoming assassins? It is the dark existential parable of the spy story, and perhaps this is the aspect that the film manages to capture best: the bitter irony of revenge as a tool for personal emancipation.
Alongside the deformation, there is the coming-of-age story of a genre, espionage, which in James Hawes' intentions should move from a past of traditional virility and tangible enemies behind the Iron Curtain to a future of elusive enemies and different heroes.
It is no coincidence that, in The Amateur, every example of traditional masculinity is on the margins, whether it is a charismatic but perhaps too rusty mentor (Laurence Fishburne), an ambiguous leader (Holt McCanny), or an ally too unpredictable to seriously count on (Jon Bernhtal). The world belongs to the new, and the new are the marginalized: those whom no one thinks of.
Whether the future of the spy story really belongs to insecure men (even the bad guy Michael Stuhlbarg) and women, it is too early to say. There is no doubt that The Amateur really tries to mix things up, focusing on more nuanced and reactive female characterizations (Julianne Nicholson and, above all, the acquired spy in search of human warmth, Caitriona Balfe) and an incarnation of masculinity that is alien to the status quo.
Rami Malek is the protagonist that The Amateur – and by extension the genre – deserves: a new, different hero, with an insinuating grace and an electric and nervous physicality. His insecure man who learns to walk on his own moves in open contrast to his much more traditional transition from villain in No Time to Die, the last classic Bond before the Amazon tornado.
Rami Malek is the protagonist that the story needs; the same cannot be said of The Amateur in its relationship with the genre. The film tries to invent the new espionage (driving the wrong way) by plundering its past (going with the flow), but it fails to give the exasperated quotationism an innovative, perhaps even iconoclastic, sense. It gathers inspiration but does not trigger a vital, constructive relationship with the cumbersome legacy.
The Amateur: evaluation and conclusion
A side that The Amateur has not cultivated is the technological thriller – not to forget the cold, geometric and chilling photography by Martin Ruhe – or, better, the reflection on how technology – smartphones, closed-circuit cameras, tracking devices – makes reality more readable and, at the same time, more opaque. An interesting idea, rendered in a rather static way. All things considered, The Amateur is a spy film with a good cast, with a perfect protagonist who fails to enhance the baggage of ideas he brings with him.
He imagines, rightly, that today's world needs a new espionage, new in its dynamics and, above all, different in its protagonists. However, he lets himself be overwhelmed by exasperated quotationism: he tries to mark his path by looking at the models of the past, limiting himself to exposing them superficially, without playing with them with courage and creativity.