The Amateur (The Original; Yes, Original)

The Amateur (1981)

Runtime: 112 minutes

Directed by: Charles Jarrott

Starring: John Savage, Christopher Plummer, Marthe Keller, Arthur Hill, Nicholas Campbell

From: 20^th Century Fox

The upcoming Rami Malek film is a remake. Until yesterday (when a Letterboxd mutual reviewed this) I had no idea that was the case; many of us probably didn’t know either. The trailer has been one that I haven’t been able to escape my last few trips to the cinema. Note that this is EXACTLY the sort of film that should receive a new, modern take rather than something that everyone knows and thinks it’s pointless to do again (but this time in an atrocious modern way) like RoboCop, Poltergeist, Straw Dogs, or hundreds of other examples.

For those not familiar w/ the trailer for the remake, The Amateur-based on a novel by Robert Littell-concerns a computer nerd at the CIA who has his significant other murdered by terrorists. He wishes to receive training and help to assassinate the killers. Judging that this had a swimming pool death of its own-although clearly different from the one in the trailer that is a glass pool between two buildings—the presumption is that the remake will update the original without changing that much.

Our lead Charles blackmails the CIA and this is how he receives training then is sent to Europe. Instead of Laurence Fishburne attempting to train him, John Savage (I’ll always know him for The Deer Hunter) is trained by… Ed Lauter! The cast at least has names I know, from Christopher Plummer, Marte Keller and John Marley to several That Guy actors (meaning, actors you recognize by appearance even if you don’t immediately know their names) like Graham Jarvis, Nicholas Campbell and Arthur Hill. This was a Canadian production so that explained the presence of various Canadian actors.

The Amateur has a slow, methodical pace which was even methodical by my standards (“morose” is perhaps a term that could have been used once or twice) and like others have noted, you’ll have to excuse such plot holes as “the CIA apparently doesn’t have surveillance in their own headquarters;” be that as it may, the movie was fine. As implausible as it may be, I was invested in the plot and there were some nice moments. Amateur was competently made, featuring a nice score along with some footage from Vienna, Austria.

Yes, flaws are present so that would be one reason to give the general idea a second chance, in the hopes of making a better film. I still liked this first version of the story; the upcoming new version probably won’t have the type of cipher discussion that was included here—including the conspiracy theory that Francis Bacon wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. By modern standards especially, that is a harmless theory.

Two last notes: another surprise was starting up the movie on Disney+ (I subscribe to both this and Hulu at the same time; otherwise, if you just have Hulu the film can be viewed on their platform; the print is in nice HD quality) and discovering this was presented by… Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna. Early on, a wild jukebox-looking device was shown which spits out your horoscope; it was called the Astrodata. Google told me that it also sometimes spit out other data. I didn’t need Google to tell me who made it-a close-up revealed the answer. SEGA created the Astrodata! That made me laugh as a child of the 80’s and 90’s.