What Now for Rami Malek?
He's an Oscar-winning actor, but Hollywood still doesn't know what to do with him.
There was a time when it looked like Rami Malek would be a reliable character actor in supporting roles. You could slot him into indies like Short Term 12 or blockbusters like The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. He had a distinctive look with his high cheekbones and haunted eyes like someone had crossed Peter Lorre with a male model.
But then came a surprising one-two punch of success for Malek by starring in the acclaimed series Mr. Robot concurrently with his performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. The latter earned him an Oscar for Best Actor, but Hollywood then seemed at a loss for what to do with this talented, distinctive performer. Malek, for his part, also seems slightly unmoored for what his career should be. Following his Oscar win, he took a lead role in the 90s-style detective thriller The Little Things, played a Bond villain in No Time To Die, and took minor roles in the major ensembles of Amsterdam and Oppenheimer.
His new film, The Amateur, puts him back into the lead, but even here, no one seems entirely sure what the movie or Malek should be. The premise is meat-and-potatoes spy thriller fare where Malek plays Charlie Heller, a brilliant CIA analyst whose wife is murdered by terrorists in London while she’s away on business. He wants revenge, and when the CIA refuses to bring the culprits to justice, he goes rogue with little field training.1
The Amateur is a bad movie where its technical competence and impressive cast can’t make up for the total lack of flavor or vision. Malek seems to have largely reprised his role as Elliot from Mr. Robot, but only insofar as a socially awkward computer nerd; there are none of the sharp edges that made Elliot so compelling. The script seems eager to force Malek into a kind of everyman role where he’s out of his depth because he’s such a normal guy, but that doesn’t work because A) Malek has a singular look and presence, and B) the movie also needs him to be far more intelligent than an average person, so the only friction is how violent Heller will become to achieve his revenge.
This is not a good role for Malek because part of Malek’s appeal is his oddity. He first came to my attention when I saw him on the HBO miniseries The Pacific where he plays a seemingly sociopathic soldier only to reveal surprising depth and nuance to the character. For The Amateur to polish off any texture so he can play “Mourning husband who seeks revenge,” is a waste of his unique presence, and while I suppose it’s fun to be an action hero (Malek also serves as one of the producers on The Amateur), it also highlights that the actor still seems uncertain for what he wants his career to look like.
If I had to guess what’s next for Malek, I have a feeling he’ll return to television. Even though we’re leveling off a bit from the era of Peak TV, there are still a plethora of strange shows requiring dedicated actors who will have the space to flesh out peculiar, compelling characters. The alternative is to switch over to the world of A24 and NEON, working with auteur filmmakers who understand that Malek’s asset is how he can both unnerve and seduce an audience rather than quickly winning them over from the first frame. But the determined field agent of The Amateur is an awkward fit, and even if the surrounding film wasn’t such a slog, it would be a dull choice for a performer who seems better suited to upending genre expectations rather than abiding by them.
Recommendations
Passover is on Saturday, and you could do far worse in recognizing it by watching The Prince of Egypt. One of the things I love about the movie is that even though it’s as star-studded as anything produced in the 1990s, it also doesn’t try to hide its Judaism. I genuinely tear up at the Exodus scene and the children start singing, “A-shir-ra la-do-nai ki ga-oh ga-ah,” which translates to “I will sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously.” It’s difficult to imagine any mainstream animated film doing something like that today.
You can get the film on 4K for $11.29 (62% off) on Amazon, and I recommend adding it to your collection.
Note: I earn a small percentage of sales made through my Amazon Associates links.
What I’m Watching
Over the weekend, I watched all three parts of Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization documentary trilogy. My pal Russ first recommended the films to me over a decade ago, and then I saw them listed in Millie De Chirico and Quatoyiah Murray’s TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema. When they hit Criterion Channel last month, I figured it was finally time to take the plunge, and I’m glad I did.
The first film came out in 1981 and chronicles the punk scene in Los Angeles. The second film from 1988 then dives into the world of glam metal before returning not only to punk in 1998 but a look at homeless young punks on the streets of L.A. Even if you think, “Well, this kind of music isn’t my thing,” Spheeris does a terrific job of structuring and conveying the appeal and shortcomings of these worlds. The third installment, in particular, is bittersweet because it’s not so much about the music as much as young people on the margins of society who have still found a community thanks to a shared love of punk music.
What I’m Reading
I finally finished Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, and it earned every bit of acclaim it received upon release. The book opens with a bit of true crime as it tells the story of the abduction and disappearance of Jean McConville, a mother of ten, from her home in Belfast in 1972. This story then provides an opening into The Troubles and examines key players in the conflict, their methods, and their relationship with violence. Keefe then makes a brilliant turn by not only telling the history of these events, but by then examining how memory reshapes events and for some it either deepens the trauma or, for those seeking to rewrite narratives, becomes a perverse way to build a new future.
I’ve now started reading Animal Farm because I’m occasionally drawn to books that typically get assigned in high school but, for one reason or another, weren’t assigned at my particular school (we read Brave New World as our slice of totalitarian life, and I have no regrets there; it’s a great book).
In other reads:
‘I Probably Shouldn’t Even Be Answering This Question’ by Bilge Ebiri [Vulture] - This is a terrific interview with Michael Mann for the new 4K release of his debut feature Thief. I love this interview not only because Thief deserves a lot of love, but because Ebiri drills down on how the film is an exploration of labor even though its characters live outside of the law. Essentially, just because something is a heist, that doesn’t make it recreation, and the way you get paid for it is still in line with capitalism. It’s a great read, and if you haven’t seen Thief, you should get on that.
The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk by Jill Lepore [The New York Times] - Lepore examines the ideas held by Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, a leader of the failed technocrat movement of the 1920s and 30s. The most compelling aspect here isn’t so much that Musk and Haldeman are blood relations or that Musk somehow studied his grandfather’s beliefs and is attempting to implement them as a matter of family pride. Instead, we can see across generations how Haldeman, Musk, and their ilk believe that people like them deserve to rule. They—scientists and engineers (although Musk is a poor scientist and a poor engineer)—are better equipped to lead society than the masses. It’s delusional and autocratic, but it’s also where we are. The fact that Musk’s grandfather also believed this tripe shows there have always been men like this, and there always will be.
What I’m Hearing
The New Pornographers have a new single out, and I’m hoping it heralds a better album than their last couple of releases. Their 2007 album Challengers is one of my all-time favorites, but I found In the Morse Code of the Breaklights and Continue as a Guest to be underwhelming. Sometimes bands and artists just drop off (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that New Pornographers member Neko Case also hasn’t had a great album since 2009’s Middle Cyclone despite her stunning vocals), but hope springs anew that they’ll bounce back.
What I’m Playing
I got my platinum trophy on We Love Katamari + Royal Reroll, and so now I’m plugging away at the new, super-hard levels Team Asobi added to Astro Bot. The good thing about tough platformers is that all it takes to improve is time and patience rather than strategy or perfect reflexes. There’s a little bit of skill with dexterity, but the real demand is on muscle memory. So that’s what I’ll be doing until Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comes out for PlayStation next week.
As a side note, the whole “he’s brilliant” thing strains credulity when 1) a lot of his puzzle-solving is done with a computer; and B) he’s shocked, shocked that the CIA may have ulterior motives and political machinations incongruent with justice because he never solved the puzzle of opening a history book. Also, I didn’t know the CIA’s headquarters was named the “George Bush Center for Intelligence,” which is objectively hilarious when you consider his son went and invaded another country based on bad intelligence.