Are computer scientists the secret agents of our time?

The actor as author: Rami Malek He became famous for playing a gifted and neurotic hacker in the series Mr. Robot, already Amateur plays Charles Heller, a CIA cryptographer heartbroken over the murder of his partner in a terrorist attack. As he obsessively examines the security camera footage that recorded the tragedy, everything points to the film—which adapts and updates a Robert Littell novel that was already made into a film in the 1980s—following the same thread as titles such as Blow up, Impact either Blade Runner, where the protagonists are confronted with images that contain a mystery that must be deciphered by enlarging them, breaking them down, or even analyzing an audio recording.

But for director James Hawes, this is simply a preamble to what he understands as the true raison d'être of the film: to explain the transformation of the harmless technophile widower into a lethal spy thirsty for revenge. This would not necessarily be a problem, if it were not for the fact that Hawes's disinterest in the image extends to the staging, incapable of giving life and play to potentially juicy sequences, such as the one that takes place in a glass pool suspended between two skyscrapers and threatens to crack. An aesthetic grievance that also becomes a dramaturgical betrayal, since to consummate his plans for justice, Heller cannot call on the agility, skill, and physical strength of his fellow secret agents. Instead, he manipulates security codes remotely, stopping technological traps for his enemies and pursuers. The way the film avoids showing us the design of these strategies aligns those responsible forAmateur with those who despise the work of its protagonist as an incomprehensible and tedious activity… that doesn't even deserve to be filmed.