The Amateur is one of this year’s most interesting action movies, taking a very different approach to the spy genre than most audiences will be familiar with. The story follows a CIA agent named Charles Heller, who ignores his lack of combat training and sets out on a violent quest for revenge after his wife is murdered by terrorists.
Featuring excellent performances from Rami Malek and Lawrence Fishburne, The Amateur does an excellent job of separating itself from previous spy movies by changing specific aspects of its story and playing with genre conventions in a very bold way. The Amateur’s unique approach is a very clever one, and it totally reframes the genre as a whole.
The spy genre is one of the oldest and most well-trodden in cinema history, to the point where audiences are very familiar with its various tropes and twists. These days, anything that puts a new spin on this kind of story is exciting, as is the case here.
With The Amateur now available to watch on streaming, many audiences are finally catching this creative spy movie for the first time. While the film received fairly mixed reviews from both critics and general audiences, there’s no denying that its ambitious scope and unconventional character tropes are something to be admired. The effects of The Amateur will surely be felt throughout the action genre in the coming years.
The Amateur Focuses On A Non-Traditional Type Of Spy
As the тιтle suggests, The Amateur isn’t the kind of spy movie with skilled ᴀssᴀssins and tech geniuses – instead, it’s a story about how the world can push people to extremes that they’ve never prepared for. This is the basic premise of the movie; Malek’s protagonist, Charles, isn’t a trained killer, he’s just somebody following a path that life has forced him down.
While there’s always something fun about watching spies like James Bond or Jason Bourne hunting down their enemies with expert precision, The Amateur proves that it can be equally entertaining when the protagonist doesn’t quite know what they’re doing. Not only does it offer an interesting twist on the formula, but it also makes the character more compelling and likable.
Movies with professional spies always have to justify why these characters chose a life of complete secrecy; there’s typically some kind of tragic backstory that hardens their exterior and creates some distance between the character and the audience. They aren’t as relatable as The Amateur’s characters are, because they don’t always feel normal in the same way.
Conversely, Charles Heller doesn’t have this introverted, damaged personality that turned him into a trained killer – it’s a path that he chose purely out of blind loyalty to his late wife. This is infinitely easier to root for, and The Amateur does an excellent job of keeping the audience on Charles’ side despite the poor decisions that he makes.
There are plenty of movies like The Amateur that use regular “everyman” archetypes as their main characters, but it’s certainly a minority of the spy genre. For a wide-appeal blockbuster that’s looking to include big set pieces and intricate fight sequences, it’s more logical for the protagonist to have that necessary skill set.
Instinctively, it feels like an amateur spy would restrict the amount of action and espionage that can plausibly take place, but The Amateur proves that’s not true. Although he’s flying by the seat of his pants, Heller still manages to pull off some intense destruction, and there’s plenty of room in the film for the explosions, car chases, and shootouts that you’d expect from the genre.
The Amateur Updates Its Cold War Source Material For Modern Times
However, it’s not just through Charles’ characterization that The Amateur manages to separate itself from traditional spy storytelling. The movie also does an excellent job of modernizing the story and drifting away from the outdated Cold War context of the source material. The Amateur is notably different from other versions of Robert Litell’s classic espionage story.
Typically, spy movies like to maintain this period-accurate storytelling that can sometimes feel out of place in the modern era. The James Bond franchise is a great example; there are several brilliant James Bond movies, but some of the series’ tropes have begun to noticeably age over the past few decades.
The Amateur feels a lot more modern and original than most other spy franchises, avoiding the familiar machismo and stoicism that’s often ᴀssociated with the genre. Its distance from the Cold War setting of the original novel is a really smart way of achieving this; very little of the plot actually changes, but it immediately feels more up-to-date than both the novel and the ‘80s adaptation.
This minor alteration gives The Amateur a much-needed makeover that solidifies it as a fresh, original take on the spy franchise. It’s unclear whether The Amateur will be getting a sequel, but if the movie does end up turning into a series, it has serious potential to become a very popular and profitable one.
