Rami Malek fails to impress in spy thriller 'The Amateur'

Despite a compelling premise, The Amateur misfires with a clunky plot and a miscast lead.

Rami Malek. (c) 20th Century Studios

By Anna Fadiah and Hayu Andini

It’s a strong concept: a deskbound CIA analyst, devastated by personal loss, blackmails his way into the field to exact revenge on his wife’s killers. That setup alone should promise a compelling blend of emotional weight and spycraft. But The Amateur, starring Oscar winner Rami Malek, squanders its potential. What could have been a gripping espionage tale instead becomes a frustrating exercise in genre imitation. Indeed, Rami Malek fails to impress in The Amateur, a film that meanders through cliché-ridden plot points without ever generating the tension or empathy its story demands.

Malek plays Charlie Heller, a low-level tech worker buried five floors underground at CIA headquarters—emphatically not the type of guy you’d expect to see with a Walther PPK or behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. Yet when terrorists murder his wife in London, he leverages agency secrets to gain permission to enter the field, promising to release damning information if anything happens to him. The setup is classic revenge fare, and the film wants desperately to be a slow-burning thriller with emotional depth. But the only slow burn is the audience’s patience.

A promising concept meets flat execution

Charlie’s transformation from analyst to agent is handled with such disregard for logic or development that it borders on parody. His mentor, Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), is a promising addition—a seasoned operative assigned to prepare Charlie for fieldwork. But their training sessions barely skim the surface, with one laughably abrupt scene at a gun range used as an excuse to abandon the entire training subplot.

Instead of a riveting montage of practical lessons and real growth, we’re left with a shortcut-laden narrative. Charlie simply begins tracking down his targets across Europe, aided more by the screenwriters’ contrivances than any believable skill set. Facial recognition software conveniently identifies all the culprits. CIA bosses quickly grow tired of his threats and send Henderson to chase him down. What should have been a game of cat and mouse instead feels like a script written on autopilot.

Malek miscast as the leading man

At the heart of the film’s issues is its lead. Rami Malek, who earned critical acclaim for his role in Bohemian Rhapsody and cult status in Mr. Robot, simply isn’t the right fit for this role. His trademark intensity and eerie detachment worked well for playing misfits and cyber vigilantes—but as Charlie, the grieving husband turned rogue agent, he’s unconvincing.

Even during moments designed to elicit emotion—scenes of Charlie crying or reliving his wife’s death—Malek remains distant, mechanical. The audience never truly connects with his pain or his mission. And without that emotional hook, the entire revenge plot feels hollow. What this film needed was an actor capable of combining vulnerability with resolve. Instead, it got one whose screen presence feels more robotic than raw.

Direction that lacks identity

Director James Hawes, best known for TV work like Slow Horses, seems unsure of what kind of movie he wants to make. Is The Amateur a gritty Bourne-style procedural? A stylish Bond homage? Or a psychological character study? It flirts with all of these ideas but commits to none.

The result is a tonal mess. One chase scene moves from a Marseille club to a casual bar, ending not in confrontation but in Charlie and his pursuer sharing a drink. In another baffling moment, Charlie escapes a dozen trained assassins simply by hopping into a car and driving off, no prior instruction or ingenuity required. The film insists Charlie is unprepared for fieldwork—then repeatedly bends the story to make him an unlikely success, often without explanation.

A script full of shortcuts and clichés

The screenplay by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli adapts Robert Littell’s 1981 novel, which already saw a film version the same year. Unfortunately, the 2025 incarnation seems content to recycle genre conventions instead of updating them. The film skips over complex spywork, instead informing the audience post-factum that Charlie pulled off an elaborate plan offscreen. Such lazy storytelling doesn’t just deflate tension—it insults the viewer’s intelligence.

Other elements feel equally uninspired. The villains are sketched so thinly they barely register, and supporting characters offer nothing but exposition. A key contact, supposedly shrouded in secrecy, gives up sensitive information at the first ask. The climactic twist, meanwhile, is both predictable and eye-roll-inducing—a last-minute swerve so tired it belongs in a direct-to-streaming thriller, not a theatrical release.

Laurence Fishburne does what he can with the role of Henderson, a hardened veteran who’s meant to provide the movie’s moral core. But even he seems to realize that the film isn’t living up to its potential. Henderson’s role is undermined by lazy writing, his wisdom reduced to platitudes and incomplete arcs. His pursuit of Charlie offers none of the dramatic friction the premise suggests. Instead, it’s just another thread the film fails to weave into anything substantial.

A missed opportunity for genre reinvention

Spy thrillers work best when they combine intelligence, suspense, and character depth. The Amateur starts with a concept that could have delivered all three. An inexperienced analyst forced into the field by grief and desperation is a fresh angle in a genre dominated by super-spies and slick action. But instead of exploring that tension—between book smarts and street smarts, emotion and execution—the film collapses under the weight of its contradictions.

Charlie is meant to be out of his depth, yet somehow always a step ahead. His motivations are deeply personal, yet his emotional journey is muted. The script gestures toward a larger conspiracy, but never pays it off. And Malek, miscast from the start, fails to bridge the gap between the film’s high-stakes drama and its need for a human center.

The Amateur is neither thrilling nor insightful. It’s a movie that forgets the basics: character, coherence, and credibility. Rami Malek fails to impress in The Amateur, not because he lacks talent, but because the film gives him nothing to work with. Its plot holes are numerous, its tone inconsistent, and its climax underwhelming. It lacks the polish of a Bond film, the grit of a Bourne thriller, and the humanity of a good revenge tale. What remains is a title that all too aptly describes the final product.

Let’s hope the next time someone tries to flip the spy genre on its head, they remember that audiences crave not just action—but connection.