The Amateur 2025 Review
“The Amateur” tiptoes around the best spy thrillers ever made but somehow misses the mark every time. It never finds its own groove, leaving every scene to drift away like a balloon with a slow leak. Critics like to say movies are sometimes “all shiny toys and no engine,” but I would have settled for at least a decent paint job. When a story runs on vapors, the only thing left to do is stare at the engine—and the engine is junk. It’s hard to ignore a roadmap that falls apart if you squint, and that’s exactly what happens when you realize the script trades effort for Twitter headlines. My brain would rather follow a good lie than an awful truth, but the truth here is that the people never breathe and the plot never makes a single logical click.
Picture the late Tony Scott getting the same outline: a data geek who somehow compiles a kill count that would impress an action-figure company. He’d have drenched the ride in neon and noise, and I’d have chewed the popcorn like an idiot jacked on caffeine. Instead, I spent two hours in a quiet theater and landed at the credit roll with nothing but a craving for “Spy Game.”
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| The Amateur 2025 Review |
Rami Malek struggles as CIA data analyst Charles Heller. Heller’s wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan, stuck with one of the worst “dead wife” parts in memory), is taken hostage during a London trip and killed. Heller, already suspicious, recently learned that a U.S. drone strike was faked as a suicide bombing to sell the story. He blackmails the agency, telling his bosses—Holt McCallany as the Deputy Director and Julianne Nicholson as his direct supervisor—he will kill Sarah’s killers. He insists on weapons, gear, and training to carry it out. They agree to the training, assigning Laurence Fishburne as Robert Henderson. Heller, the ex-decoder now Bourne wannabe, flies to Europe just as the CIA discovers he’s gone rogue and sends agents to catch him. He must find his targets before the agency that made him finds him first.
It reads like the sort of high-concept revenge thriller that should pop, and that probably lured the stacked cast of Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, and a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo from Jon Bernthal, who looks like he wandered off the “Accountant” sequel and then straight back.
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| The Amateur 2025 Review |
(This isn’t a knock on Bernthal—he’s always good—but he’s too good for a part that’s basically a cameo, just like Nicholson, Brosnahan, and Stuhlbarg.) We’re meant to feel the story pulse through Malek’s Heller. He’s the everyman we’re supposed to project on. How far would you go to pay back the person who killed your wife? Could you stretch your old talents into a tool for execution? Those questions should burn—creating heat, tension, and feelings—but the film wraps them in such distant, stilted, and uninvolving scenes that you register the impact in your head, not your gut. An ordinary guy slips into global assassin, and the movie’s heartbeat flatlines, presenting the fallout in a colorless, clinical dissection.
Malek and director James Hawes never let us walk beside Heller. Instead, we’re kept at arm’s length by every choice, from Malek’s twitchy, fussy acting to a color palette so thoroughly underlit it feels like a sinus infection. The shade isn’t even navy; it’s functionally “gloomy.” Each shot looks like concrete. That choice only highlights how stale the lines are, how empty the politics, and how contradictory the so-called “characters.” The film slumps like an empty bag, and even the one chase-and-gun-facebook-fight feels so half-baked the comedy feels unintentional. Heller is chased by a dozen guns, then—bam—he’s alone and we’re still waiting for the explanation.
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| The Amateur 2025 Review |
https://www.freelistingusa.com/listings/fmovie-1
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