The Amateur

1982 "In a world of professional assassins, there is no room for an amateur."
5.8| 1h52m| R| en
Details

A researcher for the CIA who convinces his superiors to send him to the eastern bloc in order to avenge the murder of his wife by enemy agents discovers a web of deception underneath his wife's death.

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Reviews

Steineded How sad is this?
Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Benoit Vanhees A leftist terror group erupts into the US Consulate in München, and takes a number of hostages, including Americans. The hardboiled team demands the immediate release of a number of fellow terrorist, otherwise the US hostages will be shot dead at a rate of one per hour. A "post Münich '72" discussion takes place between German and US spokesmen to determine what to do. As the terrorists' demands aren't met within the imposed deadline, one of the hostages gets executed in cold blood. The young woman who got shot dead was the girlfriend of a CIA computer specialist. But at the same time -strange coincidence- , the killer too is working for the CIA, and has infiltrated the terrorist cell. The boyfriend of the executed girl -although an "egghead" or CIA bureaucrat- wants to avenge her death by killing systematically all the members of the cell. He learns that they are hiding in Easter Europe. As the CIA doesn't seem to be inclined to help him, he uses some arm twisting techniques to force the Director of Central Intelligence to change his stance...The film certainly isn't bad, but at the same time I couldn't call it fantastic either. Therefor, the story is built on just too much coincidences and unlikely events. Also, the idea of the non-experienced CIA man managing to do unlikely things, exactly because he's no trained and therefor predictable field agent has been treated in a much more convincing way in "Three Days of the Condor".Christopher Plummer was doing a relatively nice job as Professor Lakos, but on the whole, I found the actors too neither sensational, neither incredibly bad. Same thing for the OST. That is -to me at least- the weak point of the movie: it is in almost all its aspects "just average", nothing more, nothing less.The strongest side of the movie is the excellent choice of locations. The chosen Austrian landscapes, and a few Skoda's here and really give the impression the movie has been shot somewhere in Eastern Europe.
manuel-pestalozzi I have never been to the Czech Republic yet, but I hope that some day I will make it. This movie will certainly not influence my decision – but Czechs might like to watch it. Will they recognize their own country? I doubt it.Basically this is a vigilante movie. Some terrorists (not oriental Muslims for once but German home grown nut cases) storm the American consulate in Munich, take all people hostage and ask for the release of some of their comrades. Otherwise they will kill a hostage every, say, half hour. For good measure they kill a young woman right after formulating their demands. As fate would have it, it's the fiancée of a CIA ciphers specialist who decides that he wants to go after the killers (who got away) and kill them in turn, cost it what it may.The terrorist's area for occasional relaxation and training sessions is the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. So our hero has to go there and forces his employer to help him. Once there he discovers that they don't like him at the CIA and are after his hide. But among bad to brutish Czechs he finds good Czechs who will gladly risk their lives so that he can fulfill his (perfectly understandable) dreams of revenge.Very often this movie is outright ridiculous. But there are a few very good and excellently filmed scenes. The highlight for me is the young yet very bald terrorist who takes a swim in a luxurious old Czech hotel, all on his own, only to get blown up by our hero with the help of plastics taped to the glass pane which separates the pool from the bar. The acting is so so but Christopher Plummer is simply brilliant as the sophisticated bad Czech. There seem to be no limits for this wonderful actor, he really is extremely versatile. The Czech outdoor scenes were partly filmed in Vienna, there are also a few great shots of 19th century Munich.
Roedy Green This movie explores revenge, why, the morality, the effects, so it is somewhat deeper than your usual simple blood revenge flic.The movie starts out portraying the CIA as a bunch of boy scouts. I said to myself "Get real". However, as the layers of the onion peel off, a much darker picture emerges. I won't spoil the surprises.The movie has a very relaxed pace by modern standards.Nicholas Campbell plays a terrorist. You only get to see him for brief glimpses. His astounding good looks are distracting. It is hard to whip up fear or hate for someone so startlingly handsome.The movie keeps you guessing who is behind the relentless legions out to kill our naive hero. His endless narrow escapes from a variety of enemies severely stretch credulity. After all, before this began, he had never even held a gun.I really enjoyed the setting, Prague, including the beautiful warm cozy interiors. Exotic settings are a third of my enjoyment from the genre.Much of the dialog is not in English. There are no subtitles. This is an artistic device, since the hero has only shaky knowledge of languages other than English. It makes you see things from his point of view.The scene where the hero dispatches the female terrorist is shocking, even by today's gruesome standards, with much the effect the piano wire assassination had way back in From Russia With Love.
Hugh59 Typical freaking Hollywood anti-American nonsense! This movie takes place back when you had terrorist gangs from East Germany infiltrating into the West, robbing banks and killing business executives, then skipping back into the East. The movie deals with a botched CIA effort to infiltrate one of these terrorist groups which causes an innocent American civilian to get killed. The movie makes the CIA into the villain and actually has the KGB chief in East Germany (the guy controlling the murderous terrorists) as a sympathetic character. Well TICKLE ME HARD WITH A CHAINSAW! I WANT the CIA to have teams of assassins going around looking for fluking Al Qaeda operatives. If Bill Clinton had not been such a wimp(if he had REALLY believed that the USA was right to fight terrorists), he would have had Osama Bin Laden assassinated in the late 90s. Clinton missed SIX opportunities to kill Bin Laden...as a result, 3,000 Americans died.This is the same stupidity behind the remake of THE BOURNE IDENTITY. During a time when the country is at war, take a book in which the CIA represents the good guys and turn them into the bad guys! I spit at Hollywood!