or, “Bringing the Chicago-Wednesday Vibes”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.
1.5 out of 5
In an effort to engage more with my fellow hobbyist writers, here’s a tip that’s been beaten over my head through the years: use a thesaurus. Getting started is as easy as searching “synonym for word” on Google, and sprinkling some five-dollar expressions like Meghan Sussex sprinkles edible flowers is a good thing.
Let’s tutorial this by deep-diving into a few curated terms that I would use to describe “Mr. Robot” & “Bohemian Rhapsody” star Rami Malek’s new film, “The Amateur”:
en’co’pre’si’tic
A made-up adjective from the medical diagnosis “encopresis”; or, as 2001’s “Rat Race” calls it, “prairie-dogging.” The Amateur made me feel encopresitic: it was engaging enough to have convinced me to hold it in, so as not to miss anything.
bull’shit
Oxford calls it “stupid or untrue talk… typically to be deceptive.” The last ten minutes of The Amateur are bullshit, and ruin it. There’s no twist; no full-circle; and no viewer catharsis, anticlimactically concluding with little more than a subdued conversation, and a “where are they now.” I held my poop in for that?
[cont’d]
squan’der
Or, wasteful; improvident; “expending something of value carelessly.” Genre films can live & die by their casting, and other than Malek – who is perfect in a nebbish, on-brand role – The Amateur squanders its cast. “Marvellous Mrs. Maisel” graduate Rachel Brosnahan fills her schedule as jejune eye-candy before becoming the new DCU’s full-time Lois Lane.
The MCU’s current Punisher, Jon Bernthal, has two superfluous scenes totalling five minutes of screen-time, and Laurence Fishburne – despite getting the fight scene here that he never had in “John Wick” – is more of a Samuel Gerard (“The Fugitive”) style hunter than the mentor he was hyped as. An opportunity to streamline the script by amalgamating Bernthal & Fishburne’s roles was missed.
mus’ty
Stale; moldy; out-of-date & “lacking vitality.” Not only is The Amateur a remake of a 1981 thriller – a literary adaptation first – but its revenge story has been told six ways to Sunday; “Conclave” composer & hack Volker Bertelmann brings the Chicago Wednesday vibes; Fishburne’s fight is overproduced; and someone dies from getting hit by an off-screen car. Yawn.
As disposable, turn-your-brain-off, Z-grade entertainment, it’s unpresumptuous about its intentions – but its anarchic denouement made me overthink everything else it got wrong. The Amateur is a musty bygone in a crowded genre full of elevated alternatives.
//wd 4.18.2025
Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you going to be checking this out on-demand? Does the claim of a bad ending, or a low average score, make you more interested in seeing something? Is $15 CAD too much to pay on a non-Tuesday to sit in a dark room in front of a screen for a one-time hit? Do you agree that Rachel Brosnahan could be the next Helen Mirren in thirty years? Leave us your comments below!
theory of a daskeman 