THE Amateur might sound like another espionage-laced action romp with a tragic backstory, but beneath the high-stakes CIA jargon and global manhunts lies something surprisingly tender: a broken man, a lost love and a whole lot of emotional unpacking… with guns, of course.
Directed by James Hawes, this adaptation of Robert Littell’s 1981 novel is not trying to reinvent the spy genre, but it does manage to slide a tissue-worthy tale of grief and purpose into a movie filled with encrypted data, shadowy figures and international conspiracies. Viewers expecting John Wick: CIA Edition might be caught off guard, in the best way. What starts with loss quickly snowballs into one man’s mission that feels less like a standard hero arc and more like an internal combustion of rage and regret wrapped in a trench coat.
