In the American pop media landscape, there is a plot motivation called “Woman in Fridge.” This is taken from the DC Comics Green Lantern when the superhero goes into a flying rage when he sees that his beloved girlfriend is decapitated and her dead body is stuffed inside the refrigerator.
This becomes a pivotal moment for the superhero. This shows that the motivation for a hero’s journey is borne out of a dead woman’s body. This is basically what the movie The Amateur (2025, directed by James Hawes) is all about.
The lead is Rami Malek, a technology and security expert for the CIA. His wife, the brilliant but underused Rachel Brosnahan, falls prey to a terror attack.
What comes next is the caper brought by “If you want something done, do it yourself.” Malek’s CIA superiors plod their feet regarding the progress of the investigation. Malek then goes into a montage of self-improvement, from awkward, mousy technology expert to vigilante. This is conveniently like Batman because of the technology afforded by the CIA, but also like James Bond, with relatively weaker muscle mass.
The movie becomes a shell of a caper and chase because Malek is charmless in this movie. Is he neurodivergent? It is implied. You would know the killers were ticked off if you had seen the trailer. But it gets to be so improbable that one has to watch it for the acting chops of the supporting cast instead. This would be Laurence Fishburne as Malek’s assigned “trainer.” There’s Jon Bernthal as a rugged agent. But the pièce de résistance would be Michael Stuhlbarg as the mastermind.
For less than five minutes of screen time, Stuhlbarg shows more of a vulnerable villain and exudes a more human relatability than Malek’s character. This is a problem because what does this movie want? A caper? A character study? It seems to be a clumsy, hunky piece of filmmaking. There were no immersive action or dynamic fight scenes (I mean, this is a computer geek anyway, not an Ethan Hunt Mission: Impossible character).
This movie is a comedy because the CIA director (portrayed by a steely Julianne Nicholson) is an avenging angel who wants to clean up the agency and be accountable to the American people. That alone becomes a distant figment of imagination in these days of Trumpian politics, wherein agencies are weaponized against those who are seen as un/non-American and will be deported to a prison complex in the middle of an El Salvadorian jungle. This is far more compelling and scarier than The Amateur.
Not all of us can be savants like Rami Malek with access to institutional finances and hardware. It is funny that he is portrayed as an amateur when his job affords him the capability of and proximity to war and attack mechanisms of American exceptionalism. Frankly, they killed off the wrong character. Rachel Brosnahan would have made this a more lyrical internal journey of loss, not some cat-and-mouse film with gadget wizardry.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
