THE AMATEUR

Name: THE AMATEUR
Item: THE AMATEUR
Author: Review

"Grieving Hero Seeks Justice for Wife’s Murder"

Family Content: -1 Caution advised for older children, including teenagers, and sensitive adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

THE AMATEUR is an excellent spy thriller. Rami Malek plays Charlie Heller, a CIA decryption analyst. When his wife is murdered in Paris by three terrorists, Charlie naturally wants some revenge. He learns that the terrorists are actually mercenaries working for his corrupt boss, who’s been covering up their unsanctioned, reckless black ops. Charlie blackmail his boss with exposing the black ops operations to give him some training to go after the terrorists himself. However, his boss finds out Charlie’s bluffing. Can Charie outwit his boss and the hardened mercenaries? The answer to that question remains doubtful, because Charlie is naturally still haunted by his wife’s tragic death.

THE AMATEUR is a superb, exciting cat-and-mouse thriller where the hero must outwit both the corrupt CIA officials and his wife’s killers. It has a very satisfying ending that upholds traditional ideas of justice and marriage. However, there’s some moral relativism to the hero’s actions earlier in the movie. THE AMATEUR also has intense but bloodless action violence and nearly 20 obscenities and profanities. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children and sensitive mature viewers.

Content:

(BB, FR, C, LL, VV, N, A, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Ultimately a moral worldview about bringing a spy/terrorist to justice, who murdered the hero’s wife in cold blood, but the hero operates in the world of espionage and out of revenge, so there’s some moral relativism to his actions, plus hero’s wife sacrifices herself to take the place of another hostage, which ends in the wife’s death;

Foul Language:

16 obscenities (including one “f” word where the hero is running through a crowd and several “s” words), one GD profanity, one OMG profanity;

Violence:

Strong and intense, but not bloody or extreme, action violence includes a shootout occurs in a hallway (seen through a surveillance camera, mercenaries/terrorists take people hostage, leader shoots hero’s wife in cold blood offscreen (footage only shows him pointing a gun at her head, but the footage is replayed several times), hero secretly invades a room with an allergy booth in a clinic to threaten a woman to give up the whereabouts of the killer (he unleashes pollen into the booth to force her to talk), woman chokes, but hero has to let her out, and there’s a fight between them, hero unleashes a flash bang with smoke to escape a potential assassin, hero explodes a glass encased swimming pool hanging between two buildings to force mercenary to talk, hero rigs an explosion to threaten another mercenary, character gets shot dead during a chase sequence with lots of gunfire, a lengthy fight scene between two men ends up with one man shot dead, hero knocked unconscious;

Sex:

No sex scenes or sexual immorality, but widowed hero does comfort an older widow whose husband was murdered years ago by Russian spies (they’re hiding from people who want to kill them if given the chance);

Nudity:

Upper male nudity in two scene showing a man swimming;

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Government corruption ,but it’s rebuked, and hero blackmails two corrupt CIA officials get him some training to hunt down the men who killed his wife.

More Detail:

THE AMATEUR is an excellent spy thriller about a CIA decryption analyst who blackmails two corrupt CIA officials to train him to be able to hunt down and execute the corrupt mercenaries who kidnapped and killed his wife in Paris after the analyst realizes the officials have no intention of bringing the mercenaries to justice. THE AMATEUR is a superb, exciting cat-and-mouse thriller where the hero must outwit both the corrupt CIA officials and his wife’s killers, who’ve been working illegally for the rogue CIA officials, and the movie eventually upholds traditional ideas of justice and marriage, but the movie does have intense action violence plus some foul language and moral relativism.

The movie opens with the CIA analyst, Charlie, saying goodbye to his wife, Sarah, who’s going to Paris to attend a conference. She wants Charlie to come with her, but Charlie’s not much of a traveler. So, Charlie declines, a decision he’ll come to regret.

Meanwhile, at work, Charlie has a contact overseas that he uses to help him with his decryption work. He thinks the person lives in Istanbul, but the person is cagey about their location. Using information from the informant, Charlie decrypts some black ops CIA jobs in the system that accidentally killed allies or civilians but were covered up to appear like terrorist acts. His co-worker, Carlos, advises him to forget it. Being a whistleblower in the CIA could get you killed, he implies.

However, the next day, Charlie’s called into the office of his boss, a deputy director named Moore, whose name was tied to the documents covering up the unsanctioned black ops. Moore and his assistant, Caleb, inform Charlie that his wife’s been shot dead by a terrorist. Charlie’s been so engrossed in work while his wife’s away and hasn’t heard the news. Three masked men had some kind of meeting that went wrong. A shootout occurred. Escaping from the police, the men took hostages. Charlie’s wife was taken when she tried to protect another woman from being taken. Out in the street, the leader shot her dead to make good their escape.

Moore promises Charlie they’re going to track down the three men and bring them to justice. However, two days later or so, it becomes clear to Charlie that Moore’s dragging his feet. He doesn’t believe Moore’s excuse that they’re trying to nab the people behind the men.

Using his analyst skills, Charlie discovers that the men actually were part of Moore’s unsanctioned black ops gang. He also uncovers the names of the men, and the fact that one of the people feeding them their assignments is a woman in Paris. Moore asks Charlie what he wants. Charlie says he wants to assassinate the people who killed his wife himself. He plans to force the woman and the two henchmen to help him locate the whereabouts of their leader, the man who pulled the trigger. Charlie also wants Moore to give him CIA raining to help his mission succeed. If Moore doesn’t give him the training, he will expose Moore’s unsanctioned black ops schemes to the press, including Moore’s connection to the man who killed Charlie’s wife.

Moore reluctantly agrees. He sends Charlie to train under a long-time CIA operative and special ops commando with a military title, Colonel Henderson, played by Laurence Fishbourne. After working with Charlie, Henderson concludes that Charlie isn’t a killer. He won’t be able to shoot his targets face-to-face.

Meanwhile, after tracking Charlie’s movements since his wife died, Moore concludes Charlie is bluffing about leaking documents to the press if anything happens to him. However, when Moore orders Henderson to execute Charlie, Charlie has already disappeared into the night. He actually had bugged one of the places where Moore was investigating. So, he knew when Moore was going to order his death.

Charlie shows up in Paris, where he’s following the movements of the woman who hands the mercenaries their assignments. Moore sends Henderson after Charlie.

Can Charlie get the woman to reveal the whereabouts of the mercenary leader or his two henchmen? Can he outwit Moore and Henderson, not to mention the three killers?

Charlie’s job is made more difficult by the fact that he’s naturally still haunted by his wife’s tragic untimely death.

THE AMATEUR is a superb, exciting cat-and-mouse thriller where the hero must outwit both the corrupt CIA officials and his wife’s killers, who’ve been working illegally for the rogue CIA officials. The hero must constantly stay one step ahead of his adversaries.

Eventually, the story inn THE AMATEUR upholds traditional ideas of justice and marriage. However, the hero works in the world of espionage and out of revenge. So, there’s some moral relativism to his actions. THE AMATEUR also has intense but bloodless action violence plus some foul language. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children and sensitive mature viewers. However, the violence isn’t extreme or in your face, and THE AMATEUR has a very satisfying, touching ending.