The amateur trailer begins with Rami Malek’s character Charles Heller, a cryptographer working for the CIA, living a happy and carefree life with his wife, played by Rachel Brosnahan. In the first few seconds of the trailer, he looks like a regular corporate employee who sends secret information to the CIA without any description of it.
“Have you ever wondered what they do with the stuff you dig up for them? Don’t you ever wonder?” Brosnahan asks Malek in the trailer. “It’s not my job. It is the CIA that I trust to make the right decisions. “Maybe it’s better not to know,” the latter replies. After a farewell moment between the couple, the scene cuts to Malek learning about his wife’s murder through a news channel. That’s when things start going wrong!
Haunted by his wife’s death, Heller, who had always been a computer whiz, decided to take on a terrorist group to avenge her death, hence the title. Despite the CIA trying to convince him to let him take over the case, he demands to be included and requests “mission-specific training, cash, and a new identity”.
The amateur learns to shoot and kill but appears to fail miserably. “No matter how much I train you, you can’t do what I do. You’re not a killer, Charlie,” the instructor, played by Laurence Fishburne, tells the hero. However, Malek’s character uses his cunning to develop cunning techniques to get at his wife’s killers.
The film from Slow Horses director James Hawes is based on the 1981 novel by Robert Littell. According to the official synopsis, it follows a “CIA cryptographer who manages to blackmail his agency into letting him go after a group of terrorists murder his wife in London.”
It is Malek’s second action thriller, following the 2021 film The Little Things. He starred in Daniel Craig’s adventure action film No Time to Die the same year. He also played a memorable role in the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer in 2023.
Amateur will be released in theaters on April 11, 2025.
