The amateur was bad

 The Amateur movie review on medium

I watched the movie , 'the Amateur' last night. Saw the trailer before, poking through Amazon prime and it was free, so figured why not. 

The premise was interesting even though it's been done a thousand times over.  Revenge. Fish out of water. Conspiracy. Second guessing.   Why not give it a shot. I remember thinking the trailer looked promising and some big names in the movie.  A few actors who have shown they make movies better than they should have been in the past.  Worth it. 

What a bad movie though.  The premise, again, interesting enough with a catch,  as the guy isnt Jason Bourne or some MMA ex military tough guy. A lot of the Mr. nice guy but was a former seal or secret agent troupe is overdone and kind of annoying. So at least it wasn't that. 

But it was like they took some of those movie ideas Jason Bourne like premise and then thought hey let's get the guy who played Mr Robot as a hacker to be this bored analyst with a revenge plot.  And it started early. Demands. Weird situations. World travel. Unlimited money. Random secret hacker like friends. It was like they had a room full of writers using chatgpt and throwing anything and everything and why not. Let's do that. 

It was slow. But no real build up to care. That's the worse for a show or movie. Slow buildup but too quick where you have no connection to any of these people or story. It's like some bad Saturday night live satire sketch that wasn't funny or dramatic or serious and the comedians just going through the motions. Or they brought in some big name who isn't exactly a great actor and it falls flat. 

The common Hollywood troupe of computer geeks and hackers is always annoying.  The Amateur though, he wasn't even a hacker. CIA threat intelligence analyst who seemed to have certain clearances and relationships, but macgyver like traits, breaking bad Walter chemistry knowledge, Jason Bourne like revenge and connections, Mr Robot like hacker skills and it was just ridiculous and annoying. 

  I wonder if it even gets made or winds up lost and hardly watcher if they casted someone else to be the lead. Casting directors probably thought, "hey he was a hacker in Mr Robot" let's get Rami. it was good casting to get the guy who played an intelligent hacker in a somewhat successful show to play the lead. 

So let's go with the CIA like threat intelligence analyst in the basement who is somewhat of a hacker.  Somehow all that intelligent mindset was lost as he's using credit cards , IDs given to him by the CIA,  knows they can track him, knows he's basically committing treason and being targeted and his boss director  will have it out for him.  It was really like chatgpt wrote the movie with no context and everybody thought, hey this sounds cool.   I understand the nature of stress , fish out of water, and he's in over his head but all the build up was too slow but too quick and the overall revenge played out more ridiculous than the next. 

Jason Bourne has many plot holes and points but at least the idea he was getting revenge, figuring stuff out and one bad mofo was legitimate. Even in Mr Robot , he was a hacker out to get shady bad guys and then conspiracy to the extreme, there was still some semblance of suspension of belief where some of to makes sense and you understand.  

The Amateur. It was so bad.