“Revenge is a lazy form of grief.”
That line doesn't appear in The Amateur. But it should.
James Hawes' CIA thriller—adapted from Robert Littell's 1981 novel—follows Rami Malek's Charles Heller as he transforms from deskbound analyst to gun-wielding vigilante after his wife is murdered in the film's opening gut-punch. It's not subtle. Neither is the movie. And yet, if you've followed Malek since Mr. Robot, there's a gravitational pull here that's hard to ignore.
Let's get this out of the way: The Amateur, which dropped on Hulu this summer after a sputtering theatrical release, is not the next Esmail-Malek masterwork. It's not Bourne. It's not Tinker Tailor. Hell, it's not even Jack Ryan.
But it does something peculiar: it lets Malek play grief like a cracked violin—and that, oddly enough, is what makes the whole thing tick.
Rami Malek: From Code Breaker to Cold-Blooded
If Mr. Robot made Malek synonymous with mental spirals, fractured identities, and paranoia-soaked monologues, The Amateur shifts that psychological unease into a more physical register. This isn't Elliot Alderson glitching through capitalism—it's Charles Heller, a man who, after witnessing his wife's murder during a terrorist attack, blackmails his CIA bosses for training and sets out to do the one thing government bureaucracy never allows: act.
There's a moment halfway through the film where Heller, bloodied and breathless, stares down a foreign asset and simply says, “I'm not supposed to be here.” And you believe him.
Because Malek doesn't play action heroes. He plays haunted men who walk like they've already been buried.
And The Amateur uses that well—until it doesn't.
Spycraft by Numbers, With a Dash of Mood
Directed with workmanlike competency (as /Film's Jeremy Mathai aptly put it), Hawes' adaptation sticks to genre GPS like it's afraid to make a wrong turn. Yes, there's a conspiracy. Yes, there's an overlong training montage. Yes, there's a mysterious higher-up pulling strings in the background. By the hour mark, you can predict the beats like a Spotify algorithm.
The 1982 version of The Amateur—based on the same novel—was a Cold War artifact, moody and procedural. Hawes' 2024 update tries to modernize the paranoia, but it ends up stranded in the uncanny valley between old-school espionage and TikTok-cut thriller. There are no gadgets worth remembering. The villains are more cardboard than clandestine. And the cinematography leans on the teal-gray palette studios use when they want us to think we're watching something prestige.
But again… Malek.
The actor's not trying to save the movie—he's just too good to let it collapse entirely. Even when the plot sputters or Rachel Brosnahan's role fades into trope territory, Malek's commitment to Heller's unraveling gives The Amateur its only pulse.
Mr. Robot Echoes—But Don't Look Too Hard
The Amateur wants to echo Mr. Robot—it really does. There's surveillance. There's moral ambiguity. There's even a hint of anti-authoritarian rage baked into Heller's refusal to “let it go” when the system says so. But it lacks Sam Esmail's tonal control, his formal daring, his sense of rhythm.
Where Mr. Robot built tension through silence, negative space, and those deliberately off-center compositions, The Amateur pushes forward with pedestrian pacing and generic shot-reverse-shot. It says “paranoia” out loud, rather than making you feel it.
Still, for fans of Malek's tightly wound performances, the DNA is there. In Heller's simmering grief, in the awkward way he carries a gun, in the moments of violence that feel more like breakdowns than set pieces.
So… Is It Worth Watching?
Honestly? That depends on what you're after.
If you want a fresh, pulse-pounding spy flick that reinvents the genre—this isn't it.
If you want to see Rami Malek channel his Mr. Robot intensity into a different kind of personal warfare—this is worth 106 minutes of your time.
The Amateur may be riddled with cliché, but when Malek leans into the moral mess of revenge, it flirts with something deeper. Not quite profound. But close.
And in 2025's landscape of disposable content and IP regurgitations, “close” is better than most.
The Amateur
📅 Theatrical release: May 17, 2024
📺 Now streaming on Hulu
📚 Based on Robert Littell's 1981 novel
🎬 Directed by James Hawes (Slow Horses, Black Mirror)
💥 Box office: $6.7M domestic, $11.2M worldwide (via Box Office Mojo)
🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 41% critics, 52% audience
