Earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp thrilled us with Black Bag, a clever and sexy espionage thriller that put a married couple at the center of its secrets and scheming. Now comes the funhouse mirror version of that: The Amateur. On a very superficial level, both movies are about spies and marriage. But one is sophisticated, playing with genre expectations to surprise the audience while exploring the depths of marital intimacy and trust. The other is The Amateur, a frustratingly old-school thriller in which the most modern element is not the top-notch computer hacking that’s crucial to its plotline, but focusing its story of a “wife guy.”
‘Black Bag’ review: Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender face off in a sexy and sophisticated spy thriller
Academy Award–winner Rami Malek stars as wife guy Charlie Heller, who, when he’s not fawning over his beautiful, chatty, cheerful spouse, Sarah (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Rachel Brosnahan), works for the CIA in their decryption and analysis sector. An introverted computer nerd, Charlie doesn’t have much in the way of friends, unless you count his mysterious online buddy Inquiline, who sends him super top-secret info about CIA cover-ups. When Sarah dies in a hostage situation, Charlie is utterly alone. So what does he do? Well, he blackmails his corrupt CIA bosses into training him in the ways of espionage, so he can track down those who killed his wife and exact a brutal revenge.
Credit: 20th Century Studios
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