From codebreaker to widow-maker
RAMI MALEK AND CO ON HOW THE AMATEUR IS BREAKING THE VIGILANTE MOULD
WORDS TOM ELLEN
Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is out for revenge
Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) is the man to help him
Malek on location
Pool mayhem imminent
Heller and doomed wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan).
FOR YEARS, RAMI MALEK had wanted to make an action movie. But not your average muscles-and-guns genre flick. He wanted to take the kind of unlikely hero that he’d played during his four-year stint on hackers show Mr. Robot and transplant him into the world of espionage. “I kept thinking about those elegant ‘everyman’ [action] films, like The Fugitive or Three Days Of The Condor,” he tells Empire. The Amateur allowed him to do just that. In the film he plays Charlie Heller, a CIA decoder who goes on a revenge-fuelled crusade after his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) is murdered during a terrorist attack. Malek, co-star Laurence Fishburne and director James Hawes describe how they’re serving up an alternative to your average fist-throwing frontman.