“The Amateur,” a spy thriller movie released on Apr. 11 is based off of a 1981 novel by Robert Littell and follows a CIA de-coder, Charlie Heller. Heller’s goal is to seek revenge for his wife who was killed in a London terror attack by killing everyone involved in his wife’s murder. In order to accomplish this, Heller blackmails the CIA into training him to track down the terrorists on his own. Heller’s goal was to train with the CIA and kill them like an agent with a gun, but later Heller resorts to using his knowledge on technology to kill the terrorists.
The movie was previously scheduled to be released on Nov. 8, 2024, but due to the actor and writer Hollywood strikes in the summer of 2023, production for the movie had to be delayed. The production for the movie resumed in December 2023, which caused the movie’s release date to be further delayed.
When the movie was released, it made approximately $32.2 million globally in the first weekend. The domestic weekend box office numbers put “The Amateur” in third making $14.8 million, putting its numbers behind” he Minecraft Movie” and “The King of Kings.” In total, the movie produced $40.4 million in just the United States and $94.8 million worldwide throughout the time it has been in theaters.
The movie was heavily advertised leading up to its delayed release, as advertisements showing a short trailer including snippets of the movie were shown on TV and social media. The unique advertisements enticed me to go watch the movie as it seemed to be an interesting action movie including a unique plot.
Despite the enticing advertisements, the movie did not live up to my standards. I didn’t expect “The Amateur” to be like the all-time great movies like “Mission: Impossible” or James Bond, but I did expect the movie to keep me entertained for more than the first 45 minutes. The plot took too long to develop and reach the climax. Instead of building the storyline, the movie focused on Heller’s grief, which is not as entertaining in comparison to the thriller movie advertised to students.
The plot had entertaining parts and showed elements of a quintessential thriller action movie with great visuals and ideas for the storyline. The movie felt suspenseful throughout the beginning and early middle parts of the movie but felt repetitive because of the repeated use of technological inspired revenge that Heller was using throughout the movie.
Regardless of the repetition, the movie set itself up for a promising ending that could satisfy viewers but did not have a fulfilling ending that I was satisfied with. The poor ending included Heller coming face to face with his wife’s main killer, but he still did not have the strength to kill him. This made the ending compared to other action movies I enjoyed fairly poor, which left me to have mixed opinions on the movie.
