It can often feel like there’s a new action thriller being released each week that features a seemingly unlikely protagonist being thrust into an intense experience, only for this “unlikely” hero to quickly demonstrate their physical and mental prowess. For audiences, this often means having to overlook a main character hiding a superhero physique or a background in martial arts training, but with The Amateur, viewers are delivered a much different type of figure. Rami Malek’s Charlie is outmatched physically by the people he must confront, while he also struggles emotionally to commit violent acts to seek revenge for the death of his wife. While this is a relatively fresh take on the spy thriller, Malek has years of experience playing a similar role, as he earned acclaim for playing Elliot Alderson in four seasons of Mr. Robot. The Amateur lands in theaters on April 11th.
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“I was doing a film, after the success of Mr. Robot, in Serbia and I was in Belgrade, coming out of the hotel, and all these kids had these ‘fsociety’ t-shirts on and it just showed me how much that feeling of being overlooked, underestimated, alienated, unseen resonated with these kids who looked as cool … I mean they looked like a little band of rock stars waiting outside of this hotel,” Malek recalled to ComicBook of his characters in both The Amateur and Mr. Robot being unconventional protagonists. “And I thought, there is a group of people who this type of character resonates with. It keeps growing and it is vast, it is profound, and it exists — it’s ubiquitous. I like to not take advantage of it, but appreciate it. Allow it to shine, especially with a character like Charlie who is undervalued and underestimated and goes on to do things that are pretty darn extraordinary.”
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The Amateur is described, “Charlie Heller (Malek) is a brilliant, but deeply introverted decoder for the CIA working out of a basement office at headquarters in Langley whose life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack. When his supervisors refuse to take action, he takes matters into his own hands, embarking on a dangerous trek across the globe to track down those responsible, his intelligence serving as the ultimate weapon for eluding his pursuers and achieving his revenge.”
Also starring in the film is Rachel Brosnahan, who is about to make the jump into the world of superheroes with James Gunn’s Superman. The actor went on to reflect how, while Superman could swoop in to save her from the premise of The Amateur, part of what makes this story so interesting is how different it is from more clear-cut heroics.
“What’s interesting is that, one of the things I love about this story is that … Superman has obviously endured because he speaks to so many different people, so many different generations, but there’s a different kind of superhero at the center of this film. It’s a really unexpected one and I think, in some ways, Charlie’s really aspirational because you get to see somebody pushed to the brink and discover in real time just what they’re capable of,” Brosnahan pointed out. “And you get to see somebody who finds his own way through. You have Laurence [Fishburne]’s character, who’s a trained killer in so many ways, who’s looking at Charlie and going, ‘You just don’t have what it takes.’ And Charlie manages to rely on his own strength and smarts and instinct to achieve his goals, I suppose. And then you also get to live with the other side of him, the deeply human side of him, that struggles with every decision he’s made and every action he’s taken, which feels profoundly human.”
The film also stars Caitríona Balfe, Jon Bernthal, Michael Stuhlbarg, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson, Adrian Martinez, and Danny Sapani, and was directed by James Hawes.
The Amateur lands in theaters on April 11th.
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