Film Review: The Amateur

Welcome back to the blog readers. If there was ever a guilty pleasure film genre for me, it would have to be vigilante thrillers. When someone takes matters into their own hands, it is like crack for me. Take John Wick for example, an example of a modern vigilante done right. You can get behind the heinous things he does because they killed his puppy. Would I be able to get behind this vigilante and his actions? Stick around to find out.

The Amateur was directed by James Hawes from a screenplay by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, based on the novel The Amateur by Robert Littell. The film stars Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitríona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, and Laurence Fishburne. In the film, after his wife is killed by terrorists, a CIA cryptographer blackmails the agency into training him to hunt her killers down himself.

As the second film of my highly-touted "three-film weekend," I had high expectations for it, especially because the trailers were good, Drop (2025) was great, and Warfare (2025) looks great. I love the pieces involved, and this is my type of film. While I do love Rami Malek, and he is great in this film, not even he can save this film from being just...okay. The pacing is pretty poor and the editing is - dare I say it, amateur. Plus, it feels pretty formulaic and anticlimactic at the end.

Let's start with producer and star Rami Malek. Ever since he burst on to the scene with his performance in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) (in which he won an Academy Award), he has been killing it in almost everything I have seen him in: The Little Things, No Time to Die (both 2021), Amsterdam (2022), and Oppenheimer (2023). That makes me question his decision to take this film on, but I will admit that he was great in the role of Charles Heller. You can feel his pain when he grieves his wife, you can feel his anger when he realizes his own company will not do anything to bring his wife's killer to justice, and the (somewhat satisfaction) when he takes them out one-by-one. Malek is a great actor, and roles like this really prove it.

Unfortunately, this is where the positives with this film end. I first want to talk about the pacing of this film. Here's the thing: the pacing is not as bad as it is in The Alto Knights (2025) (which is the worst-paced film of the year so far), but I definitely think this film did NOT need to be 2 hours and 3 minutes long. You absolutely could have cut like 20-30 minutes from this film to have the same effect. Some scenes did not need to be as long or as drawn out as they wound up being, and I think it definitely has a hindrance on the overall enjoyment I have for the film.

Next, I need to talk about the absolutely horrendous editing of this film. Who edited this film, Kevin Dunn? For those of you who do not know who this person is, he used to be in charge of production for WWE's television series. He was known for his erratic camera cuts and camera angles. And then there is the camera cuts in this film. There is clear rookiehood when it comes to the editing of this film, especially in this one car chase scene. Literally, there is one camera cut a second, and it was absolutely nauseating. Not only nauseating, but I could not follow a damn thing that happened in this fight.

And finally, I want to talk about the story of this film. Tell me if you have heard this plotline before. Guy loves his wife very much and she is taken away from him somehow. He takes matters into his own hands to bring the killers/kidnappers/whatever to justice. He is hunted by his own government because he is going to expose their corruption in one way or another. I could have described any spy/action film that involves the American government, but this was the copy-paste plot of this film, and it is absolutely formulaic and unoriginal to a tee.

In conclusion, a stellar performance from Rami Malek cannot save The Amateur from being a by-the-numbers action thriller that feels all too familiar in all the wrong ways. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.