Rami Malek and James Hawes Talk ‘The Amateur’ and Reimagining the Unexpected Hero
In an age where everyone wants their own John Wick, The Amateur’s Rami Malek and James Hawes were eager to take another route.
Inspired by Robert Littell’s 1981 homonymous spy novel and Charles Jarrott’s own big-screen adaptation that same year, Malek and his director, Hawes, relied on The Amateur’s foundational premise as a jumping-off point for their modernized take. Upon losing his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) in a terrorist attack, CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller ( Malek) strongarms his ambivalent bosses into green-lighting his own personal revenge mission. Thus, in the newly released trailer (below), the viewer is conditioned to expect the trope where Heller transforms himself into a one-man killing machine. But he’s quickly in for a rude awakening by way of Laurence Fishburne’s CIA instructor character.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Heller instead returns to his existing core competencies involving computers and technology, and thanks to Malek’s Emmy-winning role as hacker Elliot Alderson on Mr. Robot, he’s well familiar with characters who can balance the scales at the touch of a keystroke. However, Elliot’s motivations stemmed more from intra-familial abuse and corporate malfeasance, whereas Charlie’s vengeance is rooted in love.
“In this case, Charlie has lost his soulmate, the love of his love. So he seeks some sort of justice from the people he works for, and he’s turned away [by the CIA],” Malek tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of The Amateur’s first trailer. “He’s told to just bury his head in the sand, and that breeds an explosive nature in him, making him quite different.”
Hawes — who recently explored the spy genre via Slow Horses, as well as the dangers of technology through his episodic work on Black Mirror — was intrigued by an unconventional protagonist who uses his intellect above all else. (The British filmmaker is also set to direct the DCU’s upcoming series Lanterns.)
“The tropes you want as an audience for a spy thriller are there, but with a twist,” Hawes says. “The big essential heart of it is the character of Charlie, and he is the hero and the justice you didn’t see coming. The unexpected hero.”
The trailer reinforces this point when it concludes with Charlie walking away from a fiery explosion. But instead of acting unfazed by the blast like a typical Hollywood action hero, he recoils like any person would. Malek likens the moment to a beat in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
“It made me think about Heath Ledger [in The Dark Knight], when part of the hospital explosion didn’t go off right away. You then see that he actually flinched once it did,” Malek recalls. “But even a character like [the Joker] is going to flinch at an explosion. So the idea of not blinking as you walk away from something of that caliber is just not realistic, and our aim was to make things as realistic as possible.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Malek and Hawes also also discuss the other updates they’ve made to the property, before revealing a particular cameo from the 1981 film.
***
Hello, friends.
RAMI MALEK (Recognizing his Mr. Robot catchphrase, Malek perks up like he’s seen his version of the Bat-Signal.) Hello, friend.
As I just referenced, you’re accustomed to playing characters who take people down with keystrokes, but Mr. Robot’s Elliot Alderson liked to lurk in the shadows and go unnoticed. Is The Amateur’s Charlie Heller a bit louder if he’s willing to blow up a floating swimming pool?
MALEK There’s a difference, because, in this case, Charlie has lost his soulmate, the love of his love. So he seeks some sort of justice from the people he works for, and he’s turned away [by the CIA]. He’s told to just bury his head in the sand, and that breeds an explosive nature in him, making him quite different. He’s always hiding in a sense, but he’s hiding to get to his next chess move. They get exponentially more powerful and have more ingenuity behind them, so there is a propulsive nature to him. But there is also a lack of hiding that exists within him, because he’s a seeker of truth and justice, and there’s no reason to hide, essentially.
James, unless people are familiar with the source material, the assumption is going to be that Charlie Heller is Rami Malek’s John Wick or Jason Bourne, and the trailer plays with that expectation until Laurence Fishburne gives Charlie a reality check. Was that subversion part of the original appeal for you?
JAMES HAWES Exactly. The tropes you want as an audience for a spy thriller are there, but with a twist. The big essential heart of it is the character of Charlie, and he is the hero and the justice you didn’t see coming. The unexpected hero. And that character journey, alongside a real emotional arc, is from grief to some sort of resolution.
That subversion is also present in the final beat of the trailer when Charlie walks away from an explosion. The conventional action hero wouldn’t react at all, but Charlie absolutely flinches.
MALEK It made me think about Heath Ledger [in The Dark Knight], when part of the hospital explosion didn’t go off right away. You then see that he actually flinched once it did, and [Christopher] Nolan kept it in the film. God bless him, what a phenomenal performance. But even a character like [the Joker] is going to flinch at an explosion. So the idea of not blinking as you walk away from something of that caliber is just not realistic, and our aim was to make things as realistic as possible. In the back of our minds, it was always, “He’s going to do some extraordinary things that stop the popcorn from reaching your mouth, but at the end of the day, he is still ‘the amateur.’” So we kept that as a compass, along with Charlie’s moral compass. Both guided us and reminded us that we were putting someone in a position they’ve never been in before. He’s digging into the deepest part of his soul, his ingenuity and his mind, all at once, in order to do some extraordinary things that he didn’t even think he was capable of.
Would the two of you say you were more focused on readapting the source material rather than remaking the 1981 movie?
HAWES I’m going to say that it wasn’t an either/or, really. It was making our own movie that’s inspired by the same original material and premise. So we went back to the source to take what’s so brilliant and strong about that premise and evolve it from there. We’re aware of the movie, but we wanted to give it something that feels very current and fresh for a 2025 audience.
Through your respective past work on Black Mirror and Mr. Robot, you’re both familiar with the horrors of technology, so did modern tech do a lot of the differentiating for you?
HAWES It did some of it, but the human truth is still there. The politics are a differentiation. The Cold War is over-ish, or at least devolved. We talked about the fact that a lot of the novel’s climax happened in Prague, and the most dangerous thing to happen to you in Prague these days is you’ll get run over by a British stag party’s beer truck or something. There aren’t many Soviet spies there anymore, so we moved that part of the story to Istanbul, which has a new exoticism about it. It feels a bit more dangerous in current history. So we were just quietly evolving all throughout, but we’re aware of our source. There is a cameo in the movie played by Marthe Keller, who was one of the main characters in the 1981 movie. So our heritage is there through and through.
MALEK James did something extremely smart in not wanting to place any recognizable landmarks as backdrops. You could be in Marseille or Paris, and there’s a sense of not knowing exactly where you are. You feel lost and untethered, and that increases the sense of paranoia. It essentially leaves you feeling like the amateur, so there is a first-person perspective. You’re sitting there and watching this, going, “If I’m Charlie Heller, what am I going to do to figure a way out of this situation?” He’ll run through a maze with a blindfold, and yet he uses all the other senses he has to get out of there and go beyond.
Rami, you won a golden statuette with 20th Century. Do you consider The Amateur to be a continuation of that Oscar-winning relationship?
MALEK I love that relationship. It’s a home for me. This film came to me out of a conversation with the people at 20th Century. I’ll be honest, they’ve gone to bat for me all the way through, so I will continue this relationship for a long time. There’s just a certain commitment to filmmaking that exists there, and I’m quite fortunate to be able to contribute to it. So I hope I continue that with this film and others.
You guys picked up a good time to be in the Rachel Brosnahan business. (The latter will portray Lois Lane in July 2025’s Superman.) Her character’s death serves as the inciting incident, but will her presence still be felt throughout the film?
MALEK It’s always a good time to be in the Rachel Brosnahan business!
HAWES We are a little bit in love with Rachel Brosnahan. She brings the intelligence and the soul to the movie, to the team. Rami referred to her as “the supernova.” So, yes is the answer to your essential question. She has a presence throughout the film.
***
The Amateur hits theaters in April 2025.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.