“The Amatuer” is a spy action thriller movie that has you screaming at the main character to run. Graphic by Ingrid Bonner.

Every day when I get home I always make sure that I watch one episode of my favorite show, but unfortunately it’s only on Hulu meaning I have to watch ads. One day, halfway through the episode, an ad pops up for none other than a movie trailer for “The Amatuer.” It looked interesting, and I knew I had to get my friends to go watch it with me.

“The Amateur” was released on April 11, 2025 and was directed by James Hawes. It is an American vigilante spy action film starring Rami Malek. Malek is best known for his role as Freddie Mercury in the musical Documentary “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “The Amatuer” is the remake of the 1981 film and is based on the 1981 novel by Robert Littell.

Rami Malek stars as a brilliant CIA decoder, Charlie Heller, whose life is flipped upside down when his wife dies in a London terrorist attack. When he finds out that all of his supervisors refuse to take action, he takes responsibility into his own hands and embarks on a dangerous trek across the globe to find those who were responsible for killing his wife. Very similar to the google synopsis…which is ok, but it would be good to make it more your own.

This movie had great juxtaposition because Heller’s home is filmed with his wife’s plants and sunlight, while the place he works is cold and underground. This represents how his wife was the only one who brought happiness to him, and when she died, so did the light that she brought him which furthers his conviction to get revenge for his wife.

“The Amatuer” was a perfect representation of how not everyone can be a killer. Killing takes away a part of you, and throughout the movie, we continued to see Hellers struggle from  losing himself with thought of killing. You either have to be insane or stupid to be a killer, and Heller is neither. Even though these people killed his wife, the decision of whether or not to take their lives was still an intense struggle. I like how they didn’t make Heller an immediate killing machine, and we got to see him struggle with the thought of taking someone’s life.

Prior to his wife’s death, Heller was communicating to an intellectual acquaintance through a closed web messaging platform, and they gave Heller classified information that led to an unknown terrorist cover up signed by one of his bosses. Heller used this information to blackmail his bosses into getting him CIA training and allow him to go after his wife’s killers. His bosses were not fans of being blackmailed, so they decided they were going to kill him and label it as a training accident.t Heller knew of their plans to kill him, however, and when he finally finished training, he vanished without a trace in search of the four people involved in the killing of his wife.

Heller is weak and scrawny, not even strong enough to pull a trigger without being blown back from the recoil, but Heller is a genius at turning his intelligence into a weapon. For example, he made bombs to kill his enemies from afar. I liked how they decided to make Heller kill people with a bomb and not a gun. A gun is so much more personal and intimate for Heller to look someone in the eyes and take their life. From afar he doesn’t see much. All he knows is that his victims are dead. 

I really liked “The Amateur.” It shows how even though you may want revenge so badly, it cannot be easily obtained. Heller searches the globe to kill the people who killed his wife but is faced with a wall of guilt from having their blood on his hands. When my friends and I saw this movie in the theatre, I really didn’t know what I was expecting, but I was faced with a great movie ranking high in both action and thriller categories.

“The Amateur” gets an exciting 9/10.