It was 2016. Mr. Robot was one of the smartest, most thrilling shows on TV, and Rami Malek — with his twitchy, nervous lead performance — was one of our most unique TV stars. It felt like Malek was about to blow up, and a year later, he did, with his Oscar-winning performance in Bohemian Rhapsody. That’s when Malek moved up from being one of our strangest TV stars to being one of our strangest movie stars, as Hollywood tried to figure out how to cast him. He was the forgettable villain of a Bond movie, then competed for screen time in large ensembles in David O. Russell and Christopher Nolan movies. But none of these roles felt like they really tapped into the twitchy weirdness that made Malek a star in Mr. Robot.
It took until 2025 for a movie to finally try to cater itself toward Malek. In the muted spy thriller The Amateur, Malek’s first starring vehicle since Bohemian Rhapsody, tries to mold a Jason Bourne-esque narrative around his particular brand of antisocial weirdo — and it sort of succeeds.
