Considering tech nerds are the ones now systematically destroying the planet, they don’t particularly deserve the Jason Bourne rebrand that The Amateur provides. Still, Rami Malek plays to type so well, having first come to the world’s attention playing a hacker in television’s Mr Robot, that you can’t really begrudge him running around London, Paris and Istanbul, breaking into CCTV cameras and shattering sky pools with a bit of code.
This thriller, a reimagined take on Robert Littell’s 1981 novel, is both deeply conventional and pleasingly silly, shot with the sleek minimalism of a car ad by director James Hawes, known for his work on Apple TV+’s Slow Horses. It not only kicks off with a dead wife (Rachel Brosnahan’s Sarah), but then has said dead wife periodically waltz back onto screen in the form of a grief-struck hallucination, tossing her deep-conditioned brown hair and smiling like the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in a stock photo.
