Rami Malek plays the spy-hacker-avenger in the explosive trailer for the hyper-connected thriller The Amateur.
Tom Cruise running, Tom Cruise jumping on a plane, Tom Cruise diving into freezing water, Tom Cruise fighting in a car… the trailer for Mission Impossible 8 promised an action festival for the big return of the spy saga and possibly the last adventure of Ethan Hunt. This great show will arrive in French theaters on May 21, perhaps after a visit with great fanfare on the Croisette (like Top Gun : Maverick in 2022).
However, first, it will be possible to follow the quest for revenge of a member of the CIA with The Amateur. And this second film by James Hawes, (director of A life and above all went through several series including Black Mirror, Penny Dreadful and soon Lanterns) led by a very large cast with Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Julianne Nicholson, Laurence Fishburne and even Holt McCallany, seems ready to blow everything up in view of its first trailer.
STRONG SENSATION LOVER
In The Amateur, Rami Malek plays Charlie Heller, a brilliant and reserved CIA cryptographer, whose life is turned upside down when his wife is killed by terrorists. Usually confined to his office job, he asks his bosses to send him into the field to get revenge. His superiors refuse, but Despite everything, he decides to embark on a manhunt to find who killed his wife. It's from there that the trailer becomes frankly very amusing.
If the starting point is obviously tragic, The Amateur in fact seems to be playing a bit of the “always more” card with Charlie’s quest for revenge. After solid training, the CIA agent explodes a glass swimming pool at the top of a building, delivers last-ditch punchlines, hides behind his hood in the streets of Paris… in short, a fairly short program classic where the “amateur” becomes a real unstoppable pro and increasingly crazy, but with slightly incredible situations.
Adapted from the eponymous book by Robert Littell published in 1981 (which had already had the right to its cinematographic version with The man from Prague by Charles Jarrott), The Amateur will take big liberties compared to the original story as explained by James Hawes at Collider :
« [L’histoire a été déplacée dans le temps] to give a much more 2025, much more current impression. It reflects the policy [d’aujourd’hui]and I think some of the things that people will be excited about are much more contemporary. »
Even if the trailer is a little too extravagant to give complete confidence in the project, it must nevertheless be emphasized that James Hawes knows a lot about espionage. He notably directed several episodes of the series Slow Horses, following agents of MI5, extremely well received by critics and which already has five seasons in just two years (yes yes). Suffice to say that we will monitor closely The Amateur, scheduled for April 9, 2025 in France.
