Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Background
‘The Amateur’ (2025) is a remake of the 1981 spy thriller, with lots of eye-catching, thrilling scenes that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
The movie follows Charlie Heller (Rami Malek), an analyst for the CIA. His wife was murdered in a terrorist attack during her trip to France.
In dismay and enraged by his wife’s death and the inaction by the CIA, Heller blackmails his boss, Alex Moore (Holt McCallany), with evidence that Moore covered up civilian deaths by illegal CIA orders. Heller threatens to send the evidence to the top three investigative journalists if they refused to let him train as a CIA agent.
Training for Revenge
While Heller trains, he meets Colonel Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), who eventually tells him that he isn’t a killer. Heller can’t shoot a gun properly, and he doesn’t have the guts to even point the gun at somebody else.
Heller realizes that he must get revenge on his wife’s killers using the things he’s good at, so he escapes and flies to Paris, France, using a fake identity.
While Heller is chasing down his enemies, Moore and his team work to figure out if Heller was bluffing or if there really was a dead man’s switch set up to send the documents to the journalists. It was a bluff, so Moore sent Henderson to take Heller out.
Heller’s Tactics
Heller finds all his wife’s murderers with the help of somebody he was secretly chatting with, killing them using intricate and calculated traps, such as the pool scene found in the trailer, and flooding pollen into a locked chamber for allergies.
Henderson chases Heller down, but he gets outsmarted by Heller’s quick thinking, even when Heller was backed up into a corner. Henderson appears to be dead at one point after getting shot by another CIA agent, since Henderson was sent on illegal orders.
Justice is Served
Heller realizes that his wife would never want him to hunt down her killers, but instead to move on with his life. So, when Heller finally confronts the person who pulled the trigger, he traps him and ruins his life the legal way.
After all is said and done, Heller leaks the documents anyway after learning Moore was working with the person who shot his wife, getting Moore arrested, and getting to keep his job.
Review
This movie was amazing. Rami Malek’s acting really made me sympathize with his situations and actions.
Although some may think this movie was too formulative, others think that it took the formulative aspect and intertwined it brilliantly with the thrilling scenes and the drama.
However, some parts that weren’t executed well were Henderson’s character. Henderson was portrayed as a main character on movie posters and in trailers, but in the movie, he doesn’t have a whole lot of screen time. He is only shown in the training scenes and when Heller gets chased, but after he gets shot, he randomly shows up at the end, even though there was no indication of him getting help or surviving the bullet.
Overall, the movie is a great remake of the 1981 version, which was an adaptation of the book by Robert Littell. It captures the grief of losing a loved one, character development, drama and thrill.
The Torch rates “The Amateur” 4/5 stars. Let us know what you think in the comments!
