The Amateur (2025)
6.5 IMDb
61 Rotten Tomatoes

Where To Watch The Amateur (2025)

The Amateur follows Charlie Heller (Rami Malek), a brilliant but intensely introverted CIA decoder who spends his career working with information rather than weapons. His carefully controlled life collapses after his wife, Sarah Heller (Rachel Brosnahan), is killed in a terrorist attack in London. When his superiors refuse to pursue the people responsible, Charlie decides to use the one advantage he has—his extraordinary intelligence—to take matters into his own hands. Rather than being a conventional action hero, Charlie is forced to learn how to survive in a world of espionage, deception and violence. He pressures the CIA into giving him specialized training and begins tracking the people connected to his wife's death across several international locations. Along the way, Caleb Schiffer (Laurence Fishburne) becomes an important figure in his transformation, while characters such as The Bear (Jon Bernthal) and Slater (Evan Milton) become part of the dangerous network surrounding Charlie.

  • Release Date: April 11, 2025
  • Director: James Hawes
  • Genre: Action, Spy , Thriller
  • Duration: 2 hours 2 minutes / 122 minutes
  • Language: English
  • Starring: Rami Malek — Charlie Heller
  • Box Office: $96 million worldwide
  • Where To Watch: Amazon Prime Video , Apple TV

More details about The Amateur (2025) and where you can watch

One of the most interesting aspects of The Amateur is that Charlie is deliberately different from the typical Hollywood spy protagonist. Instead of beginning as a highly trained fighter or field operative, he is a CIA decoder/cryptographer whose primary strength is analytical thinking. The movie turns his lack of conventional spy experience into an important part of the story. The film was directed by James Hawes and written by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli from a story based on Robert Littell’s novel.

Another interesting production detail is that the movie was filmed in locations including Turkey, with the story traveling through locations such as London, Paris, Istanbul and Romania.

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Did You Know

The Amateur is connected to a much older spy story. The 2025 movie is based on Robert Littell’s 1981 novel The Amateur: A Novel of Revenge. There was also an earlier 1981 film adaptation starring John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller.