Parents' Guide to The Amateur

An awkward tech genius taking on trained killers to avenge his wife's death should make for a slick, high-stakes thriller, but the story is trapped by its own source material. Every time The Amateur starts to crackle with tension, it crashes into the brittle spine of Littell's source novel. Like Charlie trying to decode a system that's designed to resist him, you can see the words on the page, but you're never quite allowed to turn it.

While the movie brings to life a tech world that 1981 couldn't even have dreamed of, it leaves any real recognition of Charlie's implied neurodivergence stuck in the past. The breadcrumbs are there—he's socially awkward, stoic, brilliant, and has difficulty recognizing and responding to social cues—but the script never names it. Naturally, Littell's novel wouldn't have gone there: In 1981, high-functioning autism wasn't really on most folks' radar. But traits like cognitive rigidity and a black-and-white sense of justice—hallmarks of the spectrum—neatly explain Charlie's single-minded pursuit. By not clearly inviting the audience into this framework, Charlie's actions seem less relatable, possibly even absurd. Most disappointingly, it's a missed opportunity to feature an autistic action hero. Adapting a novel centered on a quiet introvert is no easy task, and while director James Hawes has proven himself deft with spycraft and subtext in Slow Horses, here, he just can't quite crack the code.