Rami Malek wisely underplays nerdish spy in over-the-top The Amateur

The under-rated Rami Malek wisely underplays his unlikely character so a semi-silly storyline can remain as over-the-top as espionage-themed The Amateur pleases, writes Leigh Paatsch.

A good, but not great, spy movie, another attempt at bringing a video game to life, and a return to a swashbuckling revenge yarn add up to an interesting week at the movies.

THE AMATEUR (M)

Rami Malek as Charlie Heller in The Amateur. Picture: John Wilson/20th Century Studios

Director: James Hawes (One Life)

Starring: Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, Julianne Nicholson, Rachel Brosnahan.

★★★

Professional enough to make a killing

It has only been a month since we were privileged to open up Black Bag, which just happened to be one of the best spy movies of the past decade.

Therefore the next espionage-themed affair to bust loose with the super-sneaky stuff was always going to seem a bit second-rate.

Sure, The Amateur is no Black Bag. However, as far as gripping, globe-trotting thrillers go, this punchy production keeps pounding away until a satisfactory result is obtained.

Rami Malek has the starring role of Charlie Heller, a self-consciously nerdish guy happy enough with his lot in life as a deskbound data analyst for the CIA.

By the end of The Amateur, Charlie will be striding confidently across the screen as a fully-fledged field agent.

The key weapon in Charlie’s arsenal turns out to be his apparent awkwardness. He looks as though he wouldn’t be capable of harming a fly. However, this serves as perfect camouflage for the ruthlessly efficient killing machine Charlie slowly, but surely, becomes.

The catalyst for this radical transformation from zero to hero is sourced from one of the oldest tropes in the Hollywood playbook: they killed Charlie’s wife, and now they’ve gotta pay.

Rami Malek wisely chooses to underplay his unlikely character. Picture: John Wilson/20th Century Studios

The ‘they’ in question are a quartet of European mercenaries who have fled to different corners of the continent after bungling a job in London. Charlie’s beloved spouse was an innocent bystander who perished as the four dudes made their escape from authorities.

After using his own set of skills to identify the bad dudes from his office in Washington DC, Charlie goes rogue and gets a crash-course in cutting-edge spy-craft from the legendarily lethal CIA black-ops handler Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne).

Soon enough, Charlie is off the grid and on the hunt in exotic locales like Paris and Istanbul, picking off the perps who iced his missus one by one.

To be honest, there is a certain facelessness to The Amateur and its chief protagonist that guarantees this will not be remembered as one of the classics of its genre. If Matt Damon had the lead part here, the perfect title would be The Bourne Nonentity.

Nevertheless, the under-rated Malek toils away admirably, wisely choosing to underplay his unlikely character so that a semi-silly storyline can remain as over-the-top as it pleases.

The Amateur is now showing in general release

A MINECRAFT MOVIE (PG)

Jack Black and Jason Mamoa star in A Minecraft Movie.

★★½

General release

Hollywood just can’t resist squeezing an easy kiddie-movie buck from any old leisure-time IP it can wrap its tentacles around. The only surprise about A Minecraft Movie is that it took so long to scramble one of the best-selling video games of all time into something resembling family-friendly fare. This mish-mash of live-action characters and blockily-animated avatars probably makes more sense if you’ve played Minecraft at least a few times before. However, like that Super Mario Bros. movie from a few years back, a lack of past familiarity will not be a deal-breaker for younger viewers.

This Jumanji-lite set-up is best enjoyed by the 12-and-under set.

All anyone really needs to know is that Jack Black’s Steve is stuck inside the alternate Minecraft environment of the Overworld, and he quite likes it there. When four visitors from the real world (led by Aquaman’s Jason Momoa) enter this dimension by accident, it is up to the hyper-imaginative “crafting” skills of Steve to help them find the doo-dad that will get them back home.

This Jumanji-lite set-up is best enjoyed by the 12-and-under set, who will undoubtedly prefer the absurd antics of various mischievous Minecraft figures to the shrugging and mugging of the featured cast.

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (M)

Embedded in the DNA of every revenge tale ever told are distinct traces of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Selected cinemas

Embedded in the DNA of every revenge tale ever told are distinct traces of author Alexandre Dumas’ epic novel The Count of Monte Cristo. This swashbuckling yarn of a dashing dude whose only two options in life are to break even or die trying has been adapted for the screen many times. This big-budget French production, however, is destined to stand as the definitive version.

Pierre Niney stars as the reprehensively wronged Edmond Dantes.

French heart-throb Pierre Niney stars as the reprehensively wronged Edmond Dantes, a stand-up fella struck down in his prime – on the eve of his wedding to the most beautiful woman in all of Europe – for an act of treason he most certainly did not commit. While his best mate moves in on his bride-to-be and others capitalise cynically on his absence, Edmond is forced to cool his heels in an infamously remote jail.

Sure, it will take years for Eddie to figure out an escape route, and then several more years to perfect a brilliant disguise that will bring him face-to-face with his enemies. Nevertheless, the getting-there proves every bit as thrilling as the getting-even.

A great effort from the same team responsible for 2023’s run of excellent Three Musketeers movies.

Originally published as Rami Malek wisely underplays nerdish spy in over-the-top The Amateur