The Amateur (Disney+) Review
image from Rotten Tomatoes
Hello everyone! I saw The Amateur starring Rami Malek on Disney+ this weekend. It's a nifty revenge story about a nerdy computer guy working for the CIA who lost his wife to terrorist attack.
Plot
Charlie Heller is a nerdy computer guy working for the CIA as a decoder. One day, his wife was killed in a terrorist attack. He identifies his wife's killer and the group behind them and asks the CIA for justice. However, the CIA was unwilling to apprehend the perpetrators since they are after "bigger game". Charlie decides to go John Wick on his wife's killer and dispense justice himself. How? He blackmails the CIA with some secrets he uncovered not to send the terrorist to heaven but to train him to be able to do it himself.
Cast
image from imdb
There are lot of familiar faces in the cast who I've seen on movies and TV series before.
Rami Malek
The nerdy guy turned John Wick. He can't kill with a gun but he's handy with other stuff. He can Macgyver things to create bombs and use pollen from flowers to poison his victims.
Lawrence Fishburne
He plays yoda to NEO Charlie and taught him the basics of being a CIA field agent.
Rachel Brosnahan
New Lois Lane plays Charlie's wife who got murdered by terrorists.
Jon Bernthal
The Punisher is Charlie's field agent friend in the CIA who helps him later on in the movie.
Holt McCallany
This guy is familiar from the Mindhunter series on Netflix. He plays a CIA supervisor who has some dirty secrets.
My Take on the Movie
The movie is a familiar revenge plot. In fact, it's pretty similar to American Assassin (2017) wherein an inexperienced guy suffers a loss from terrorists and decides he's the next John Wick. Malek is a good actor and he displays grief convincingly. However, you have to suspend your disbelief, grab your popcorn and just enjoy the movie to believe that an inexperienced guy, after only weeks of training was able to evade a veteran CIA agent in the streets of Paris. There was a funny scene where he was picking a lock while watching a youtube video on how to do it, lol. Ok, you're showing he's an amateur but it could have been executed better. Why not show him practicing at home first and failing many times before he was able to master it? It would have been more convincing that way. Anyway, this was a new movie on Disney+ and it has its fun moments. Grab your favorite movie snack and watch it if you have nothing better to do.
I see what people mean by ignoring the “realities” in TV and just enjoying the “show”. lol. Feels like what this is.
Yep, forget logic for a moment and just enjoy the movie 😀
If this would have been a 90 Minute movie, I might have considered it as a no brain movie option. They had to make it 2 Hour+ though which pushes me away from giving it a chance. Thanks for putting it on my radar still!
Thank you. I watched it because of Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) who returns to a familiar role of a computer nerd. The story was better handled by American Assassin though. It was convincing for the main character there to match the villain (Taylor Kitsch).
Seeing Rami Malek in the image also triggered me to take a closer look. When it comes down to Mr Robot, I really loved the first couple episodes but I'm not even sure that I ever finished the season. I just looked what other movies he did which shows Oppenheimer but I can't remember him being in it. I did like him in Bohemian Rapsody though. Really solid performance there. Oftentimes these actor that played lead roles in Series have a hard time to get past that character.
I saw Bohemian Rhapsody too. The concert performance was well done when I compared it to the actual Queen performance. Also, I was surprised to find that Freddie Mercury was Indian 😀