SCREEN SHOT - The Amateur

Charles Heller ( Rami Malek) is a brilliant cryptographer, who spends far too many hours in dark soundproofed rooms scrolling through code looking for significant discrepancies. His wife Sarah ( Rachel Brosnahan ) is away at a conference in London. So he stays at work delving deep into a complex piece of data. He discovers that an operation previously slated as the work of a suicide bomber, was in fact a CIA black operation, and a deliberately focused unsanctioned drone attack. Instantly he realises he's stumbled upon something that is dangerous for him to know. The next day, when he arrives at work, he's called into the CIA Director's office. Suspecting his previous nights discovery may have already been exposed. But in fact she informs him that his wife has been killed in a terrorist attack on her hotel in London. 

Devastated, Charles starts to use all his own skills to investigate what happened, identifying three individuals responsible. In a discussion with Agent Moore (Holt McCallaney) he realises that they intend to do nothing to capture the folk responsible, saying they want to get the whole operation. Charles decides to tell them he knows about the Black Ops, and blackmails them into training him up to go in pursuit of his wife's murderers. It turns out in his training with Hendo ( Laurence Fishburne) that he's a hopeless shot with a gun. So he will need to use all his personal resourcefulness to develop an innovative approach to his mission. A mission no one seems to wants him to succeed in.

Though the essential premise of the movies set up is a tad unrealistic, the film does stick to its guns and does not pull any unbelievable punches in order to make it more dramatic. Malek is very good as the man that finds he's more than a little bit out of his depth, but remains driven by his own psychological compulsion to see this through. His facial expression shifts effortlessly from despair, desperation and deliberation, that feed into lightening responses in the moment. You are never allowed to forget this man is grieving and is seeking his wife's murders in order to have closure. When he does eventually find the gangs leader he asks him why his wife had to die. It was necessary in order for them to escape,he says, it was decided spontaneously, whereas Charles's revenge killings, well they are deliberate and remorselessly executed. Which is worse? Pointing out what his wife's death has driven him to do.The Amateur is a well paced thriller, that is never tempted to stray from the conceit within which it is set to operate. They carry it all off cleanly and with all the ruthless efficiency necessary.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8