Those who are fans of “The Amateur,” a 1981 spy-thriller novel by author Robert Littell, will surely be thrilled to hear that an updated Hollywood film adaptation of the story is now screening in cinemas around the country.
The majority of our readers, however, have never heard of it. Those who Googled the novel are probably wondering why exactly this out-of-print- though not completely obscure- book was deemed worthy of being put to film a second time, after first being adapted by a Canadian production company the same year that the novel was released.
The protagonist of the film, as in the book, is Charlie Heller, played on screen by Rami Malek. A genius cryptographer working for the CIA in Langley, the idyllic opening scene depicts Heller restoring a crashed light aircraft in his garage as his loving wife, Sarah, dotes on him. Even before anything goes awry, the man’s disdain for authority and willingness to bend the rules is made apparent when we witness correspondence between him and “Inquiline,” a mole with whom he communicates via email.
Two different PDFs can be seen on his monitor, one being the official copy, claiming that a recent incident in Pakistan was a terrorist suicide bombing, and the other being the redacted original copy provided by Inquiline, which claims that it was a politically-motivated assassination carried out by the CIA via a drone. The production, screenwritten by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, with James Hawes as the director, chose to update the story to a modern setting instead of preserving the novel’s Cold War background as a period piece.
The impetus for our protagonist’s vengeance-fueled quest quickly arises when terrorists carry out a hostage-taking at a conference in London- the conference Sarah is attending on a business trip. Sure enough, she is the unlucky one chosen as a pawn to be dragged out and executed in the streets, as an example to others in the room who might try to fight back. The heartbroken Heller cuts short his bereavement leave and, without much difficulty, identifies the perpetrators who are still at large in Europe.
Heller is so surprised at the nonplussed reaction of his superiors to these revelations that he decides the only way for justice to be served is at his own hands. His boss, Alex Moore, played by Holt McCallany, rightfully scoffs at his demand to be trained as a special operative until he lays out evidence implicating him in the aforementioned Pakistani incident and other rogue operations. Blackmailed, he begrudgingly agrees, sending him off to be trained under Colonel Robert Henderson, played by Laurence Fishburne.
It is at this training camp that we find out our “hero” is not only someone who seemingly can’t bring himself to kill, but is unable to hit anything at all with a gun. This does not stop him from fleeing to Europe in the middle of the night on a fake passport to execute his mission, not least because, having found out that his threats to leak details to the media were empty, his bosses decided to eliminate him and frame his death as a training accident.
Two steps ahead, Heller travels to Paris and confronts the first accomplice seen on CCTV alongside Horst Schiller, the German arms dealer directly responsible for Sarah’s death. Former Armenian Secret Service agent Gretchen Frank, played by Barbara Probst, escapes death by Heller’s gun when he freezes up and is unable to shoot, just like Colonel Henderson predicted, but that doesn’t stop him from breaking into a doctor’s office the following day and torturing Frank by filling a locked hyperbaric chamber with pollen. Suffocating too badly to cough out the whereabouts of Schiller, she bolts from the office and is fatally struck by a car as soon as the agent opens the door again.
After meeting up with the person behind “Inquiline” in Istanbul – a middle-aged Russian widow who took over from her ex-KGB husband after he “fell out of a window” – he uses his skills in cryptography and jerry-rigging, which compensate for what he lacks in combat disciplines, to track down the second accomplice, Mishka Blahzic, played by Mark Rissman, and the third accomplice, Ellish, played by Joseph Millson. Heller finally gets Schiller’s whereabouts from Ellish, but leaves him to die in a booby-trap explosion after promising to disarm it.
This dishonorable conduct is brought up in what I consider to be the movie’s highlight, the final scene in which Heller confronts Schiller on a fishing boat in Russian waters. Schiller points out that, having killed three people in pursuit of his goals, he is really not so different. The film culminates with Schiller being arrested by Interpol, as Heller hacked the boat to drive itself into Finnish waters.
My main criticisms of this otherwise very solid and worthwhile movie are the fact that the protagonist is somewhat of a Mary Sue, finagling his way out of all sorts of predicaments without enduring much suffering beyond that caused by his wife’s death. Also, though I have never shot a person myself, I question the realism of a character that is so callous about killing people indirectly and causing collateral damage having such a strong hangup over pulling the trigger.
However, if this, and the widely commented-on formulaicness of the film, are an issue, it is worth noting that they are perhaps not the fault of the film producers – the original book received similar comments, with one blogger calling it “cartoonishly simplified (with way too many convenient coincidences).”
Overall, “The Amateur” is far from an amateur effort and is an enjoyable film worth seeing, so long as you don’t expect anything that breaks the mold.