Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

If I hated The Amateur, I could make some wisecrack about how apparently everyone involved was just that. That would have been fun! Instead, these filmmakers had the nerve to make something that was . . . just fine.

Which is to say: I had a relatively good time. The Amateur doesn’t particularly arouse the passions either way. It passes a couple of hours serviceably. The definitively mixed reviews are no surprise. It has some clever plotting.

There is a bit of a moral quandary here, though. As directed by James Hawes (One Life) and as performed by Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), the title character, Charlie Heller, is not so much presented as an antihero as he is presented as a hero, understandably seeking vengeance by finding and killing the terrorists who killed his wife. I use the word “understandably” very loosely here. When the leader of these criminals is finally reached, he does point out the hypocrisy in Charlie’s pursuit of vigilante justice, but it barely gets touched on and then The Amateur moves on.

But hey, whatever—I’m here to see a glass swimming pool buckle and fall sixteen stories, and The Amateur delivers. How Charlie kills, or attempts to kill, the others is never as exciting as the swimming pool sequence, which is clearly why that pool collapsing got prominent placement in the movie trailer. The first of the killers he goes after, the attempt that goes the most wrong, Charlie does find a pretty ingenious way to threaten her life. It’s totally contrived for the sake of the story, of course, but at least it’s something we haven’t seen before.

Charlie works for the CIA, helped design all of their surveillance systems, and uses these systems and his wits to come up with clever ways to best the villains. Much is made of the difference between killing someone “from a difference” versus what killing someone at close range does to you. “You’re not a killer, Charlie,” says Henderson (a welcome Laurence Fishburme), the guy the CIA taps first to train Charlie as a means of placating him, then as an attempt to capture him. The Amateur isn’t much interested in the fact that killing is killing, no matter the distance.

But hey, forget about that, we’re having fun! The Amateur wants to have its cake and eat it too—and so do I. We’re all on the same page here. The moral gray areas of this story wouldn’t be egregious if not for presenting Charlie as though he’s on some moral quest, but I have chosen not to care about that. I care that we get to see Michael Stuhlbarg as the Big Scary Russian villain, and how he seems to have Charlie cornered but Charlie outwits him in the end. Julianne Nicholson’s CIA Director Moore is wildly oversimplified and idealized, almost to the point of propaganda, but she plays her part in taking down the people holding Charlie back so we love her!

I’ve made a fairly cynical read of The Amateur, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it well enough. Whatever works! With competent performances all around and deceptively clever turns of plot, this movie gets a pass.

*He gets the job done and so does this movie.*

Overall: B