There’s a big casting and screenwriting blunder at the heart of this rather bland spy movie. Which is sad since the premise has promise… but the execution is a huge miss.

The Amateur stars Rami Malek as a Floor -5 CIA analyst who must go on a revenge murder spree… as soon as he can get someone to teach him a certain set of skills (namely: all the murdery ones). Too bad the very idea of the tech savvy nerd becoming a super spy is some real writer self-insertion power fantasy.

The first huge flaw in this film is casting Rami Malek. I hate to say since I’m mostly pro-Malek… but he’s in his full on emotionless robot acting mode here. I couldn’t find a heart in his wooden performance and that’s critical for the plot to work. It crash lands the flick from go.

Plus just casting Malek in general… he isn’t exactly an action hero but dude played a Bond villain. This roll is asking for a more bland, boring, unlikely actor. Am average, boring guy, not whatever is going on with Malek’s unique face.

The first half of this film bored me to tears since I couldn’t connect with his performance. But once we get to a certain point, the fact he’s “an amateur” fizzles and we basically just get a bog standard spy movie. Guy learns fast on the job, I guess.

But what kills me most is how the character resolves the plot. Given the acts of vengeance he performs earlier, it makes no sense the emotional or logical choices he makes in the end. They desperately needed another pass at the script to allow this ending to make sense in context.

But since the film is a decent-ish spy movie in its second half, I’m not going hammer it harder. I’m just gonna damn it with very faint praise – it’s okish – and move on. Think about your scripts and character progression, Hollywood screenwriters. And think of your casting, casting agents.

Score: 72