Spy thriller that doesn’t thrill

Ratings: ***** Excellent | **** very good |*** good | ** Average | * poor

Rami Malek goes from being a CIA desk person to an ace field agent in this inane thriller, which also has Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne and Caitríona Balfe in forgettable roles. Directed by James Hawes, this film has been adapted from the Robert Littell novel about a man shattered by loss and seeking revenge.

Adapted by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli from Littell’s book, earlier filmed in 1981 with John Savage and Christopher Plummer in it — the narrative appears to have been updated to the present day from its Cold War backdrop. That’s probably why it doesn’t make much sense.

We are supposed to believe in Malek’s Charlie and his love for his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) because of the gifts she has given him, which include a banged up vintage plane and a fancy looking compass. But their love doesn’t register, even with the cheesy set-ups that are written in for that purpose.

Life changes when Charlie’s wife dies in a terror attack. The speed with which he reinvents himself is the main problem here. The CIA decryption and analysis nerd becomes a resourceful field agent with expertise in explosives and covert ops, and is able to remain one step ahead of both killer mercenaries and shady Langley bosses. So, is it grief and hunger for justice that bring out this skillset or is it hard training? It’s never really clear because the training bits don’t register and the so-called grief and hunger for justice feel flimsy.

Charlie is frustrated by the bureaucratic wall put up by Moore and his colleague Caleb (Danny Sapani), who don’t want him involved. But Charlie doesn’t stay in his lane and digs deeper into the CIA database. He even goes to Moore and Caleb with positive IDs of the three people directly responsible for Sarah’s death, but they fob him off by claiming that they want to weed out the whole network. Charlie eventually gets more info from a mysterious online asset known as Inquiline, and uncovers compromising information connecting Moore and Caleb to a drone strike in Islamabad, which exposes them as ruthless rogue agents.

‘The Amateur’ has a sleek look, but comes with so much tech jargon that it goes over your head. It doesn’t generate any friction or thrills and just plays on without humour or excitement.

In trying to make Charlie realistic, they give him a persona that is truly baffling. He is not supposed to be a violent man but opts for violence as a panacea for his grief. He is bad at shooting a gun, is light-weight in a true blue brawl, and is supposedly a man of planning. Even as he traverses the globe, from Paris to Marseille to Istanbul to the Baltic Coast, chasing the criminals, he is shown as a manipulator who is better at executing his hand-made traps — but we don’t get to know how he got that skill either.

This revenge thriller becomes even more implausible because Rami fails to put up an imposing act. His many tics and the lack of personality for such a role do the movie in. The numerous contrivances of its plotting and the seeming ease with which the underestimated protagonist outwits everyone, feel too fake. It’s an unreal world out there and this one feels more like a bland knockoff of a dozen other films of similar vein.

Malek and director James Hawes never get us involved in what happens here. Except for the background score, which tries hard to elevate the proceedings, there’s nothing exciting happening here. The scenes are depressingly underlit, the sequences don’t enthuse, the dialogues fail to register, the politics is iffy, and the characters don’t ring true. There are no great action sequences and the cloak and dagger stuff is too inept to curry favour.