The Amateur stars Rami Malek as a CIA computer coder named Heller who sets out on a revenge quest. It’s a hero’s journey for nerdy, smart guys. When his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is caught up and killed in a terrorist attack at London’s Heathrow airport, he uses all his CIA resources to track down the killers.

The Amateur includes several interesting, but small, parts for women. We see Rachel Brosnahan in flashbacks, but not often enough. CIA Director O’Brien (Julianne Nicholson) is around, but not often enough. While Heller is out chasing after the killers, he runs into a helper played by Caitríona Balfe. She’s not around enough either.

When Heller announces to his immediate supervisor, Director Moore (Holt McCallany), that he wants to track down and kill the four terrorists who grabbed his wife as a hostage in the airport, he gets laughed at. After all, he’s just a computer guy who works deep in the basement all day. Not cut out for killing.

But Heller has some info on Director Moore that he uses as leverage. Moore decides to play along with it and assigns Heller to work with Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) to learn how to be a killer. Henderson declares Heller hopeless as a killer.

Heller doesn’t care. He takes a computer, a phone, and his big old brain and sets off to do in the bad guys. The trailer gives away some of it, but he definitely turns out to have some lethal skills that make his revenge saga interesting to watch.

Maybe it was because the hero was the skinny nerd from the level -5 basement, or maybe it was the continued sprinkling of interesting women around him, but I thought this movie was fun and satisfying. I don’t usually like revenge plots, but this one worked for me.

The Amateur is streaming on Hulu. If you watch it, I’d love to know what you thought of it. The comments are open.