The Amateur asks what would you do if your loved one was violently taken away from you in a terrorist attack? Would you wait for others to bring the killers to justice, or would you do whatever it takes to haunt them down? Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) works for the CIA, but even the CIA even has limitations, especially if an operation is riddled with conflicting internal priorities. But this doesn’t stop him from his desire to bring his wife’s murders to justice, even when it’s proven he could never win in a shooting match or hand-to-hand combat. But what if Charlie approached this intellectually instead of physically? Charlie after all is an analyst, specializing in cryptography, using sophisticated surveillance he’s already built. What does he have to lose?
Directed by James Hawes, The Amateur is a global espionage thriller that proves anyone is capable of bringing others to justice; you just have to have a different approach. In celebration of the release of The Amateur trailer, The Koalition spoke to Hawes about how they approached the movie’s many themes, going inside the mind of a CIA analysist, the location, the psychology of Charlie and more.
What I love about this trailer is its intellectual approach and use of the environment as a trap. Can you talk about approaching the script and the Charlie character with those goals in mind?
“We’re not here to just drive cars fast. You put your finger on something that I knew is what drew us both to the script and to the story, which is that there are two parts to this. One, it was fresher and inventive, and it’s not necessarily the spectacle and the kills that were used to seeing, or if it is, it’s a little bit similar; there’s a twist, but it also feels true to the character. We all love a good car chase, but we love it that much more if we care about who’s inside the car, whether they’re going to escape, whether they’re going to survive. So, it’s that combination really of the environments, the guy in the middle of it all, and what his intellect is able to deliver,” said Hawes.
“That’s a version of expectation from a genre like this; flipping it on its head. I thought [to myself], ‘Could I ever do an action film? Would anybody ever believe Rami Malek is the lead in an action film? I thought, ‘Why not!’ What if it is very elegant, sophisticated, and unexpected, and he becomes an unexpected hero? We can all perhaps tether ourselves to the idea that perhaps we are. Whether we have a weapon in our hand or not, there’s a weapon that lies deep within all of us. You never know what you’re capable of and I think that’s the explosive element of this,” said Malek.
In the trailer, Charlie states, ‘Take account of the things I am good at.’ Charlie is not really able to shoot someone in the chest and win in hand-to-hand combat. Can you talk about Charlie’s realizing its best approach this analytically?
“When you’re dealing with a loss of that nature, where you know your soulmate has just been stolen from you—an extreme theft of a life that you count on and rely on—that is the essence of your being, there are two ways to go. You can put your head in the sand, or you can fight. And when you discover others aren’t fighting on their behalf or your behalf, there comes a point where you have to take matters into your own hands. Those hands happen to be ones that can’t necessarily fire a weapon, but they have the ability to compute things. Being the puzzle solver that Charlie is, he begins to investigate a myriad of ways to track down these people in a version of a film and a genre we’ve never seen before, and that makes it exciting, exhilarating, and quite propulsive. It’s the antithesis of what we’ve ever known,” said Malek.
Let’s talk about the look and design of The Amateur. How did you approach the filming locations and the set design to build the film’s environment?
“We wanted it to feel real, but it equally needed to feel inviting and exciting. You can see the world we’ve taken with Langley; it looks like the outside of Langley, but you then go into a world that obviously the public doesn’t necessarily know a lot about. You’ll see a lot of real-world spy offices that really look like call centers. We wanted to make it just a little bit heightened, a little bit sexier than that. The tech has all been designed by the extraordinary graphics and production design team here based on things that really exist. We’ve taken bits of tech that we know about or found out about, and then we’ve done the movie version of that so that everything feels real; it has a function; there’s nothing there that doesn’t work,” said Hawes.
“One of the thrills of the story is that it takes Charlie on this extraordinary quest across Europe to try and find the people he’s pursuing. [There’s] Paris, and then we chose Marseille, and for various reasons we transported what was originally in the story as Prague; we moved to Istanbul. It’s quite exotic; it’s got scale; there’s a real sense of adventure and exploration the film takes you the audience on,” Hawes finished.
The Amateur is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, which was previously adapted into a film that year. Were there any influences from the book or the character of Charlie that influenced this adaptation?
“I always found him quite charming in the book, extremely inventive, a sense of appreciating his own jokes though maybe others wouldn’t see them in the same light but there was a sensitivity there, an underestimation from others there that definitely imbued the way I saw Charlie and I wanted to represent him on screen,” said Malek. Hawes continued, “I read the book at the very beginning and then I reread it a couple of times and there are some details people who know the book will see brought through. We’re true to the original source material but it’s evolved through the script and it’s the script that becomes a movie. At its heart, it is always the story of the amateur, the unrecognized hero.
In the beginning of the trailer, Charlie’s wife finds it interesting; Charlie is not curious about the inner workings of the CIA and their missions. Will that conversation play a larger part within the movie?
“I will give you a one-word answer…’Yes.’ That’s part of what makes the adventure so rich and Charlie so brilliant. He has some choices along the way, and he goes for the bigger win and uncovers a lot of truths that were perhaps hidden to him at the beginning of the journey.” Malek continued with, “I think he’s always questioning things, whether he chooses to proceed in any direction with those questions and seek proper answers. That’s something he earns for himself. He’s very curious, and we delve into the world in a way no one else does, and perhaps he comes to a precipice where you think he might do some more investigating or challenging. There is a very essential moment that allows him to dig deeper, reach into or reexamine his moral compass, and take that step forward.”
The action-packed espionage-thriller The Amateur opens in theaters nationwide April 11, 2025. To learn more about The Amateur, check out our full interview in the video above.
