The Amateur

A loved one is murdered, the authorities sit idly by and the man takes risks alone to seek revenge - there are at least eighty such action and thriller films with this cliché. Moreover, "The Man from London" is a big commercial production. It stands to reason that a character with a unique face or a strong body would be enough to play the role. Is it necessary to use Oscar winner Rami Malek?

After watching the movie - I have to say, I really can’t live without him.

This is not entirely because we can imagine his role as a high-IQ geek nerd in Mr. Robot, which brings a sense of emotional intimacy. More importantly, under the surface of transnational pursuit and revenge, this movie is filled with a sense of despair of a lonely person who keeps falling into deeper loneliness, and has an emotional power higher than the average commercial film.

Charlie, a cryptographer with a loving family and a capable job, suddenly learned that his wife had been murdered. His life fell into the abyss and he once collapsed and cried alone in the empty house. His boss, who always claimed to seek justice for him, not only broke his promise, but was also the mastermind behind the killing of innocent people out of lust for power. The instructor who taught him survival skills had to follow orders to hunt him down, and was indirectly killed because of him during the operation (at least that was what it seemed at the time). He met a female informant who was also tortured by loneliness. After exchanging a brief warmth, he had to watch her fall in a pool of blood.

When faced with the agents who came to persuade him to stop, Charlie's answer was: I can't go home because she is not there.

At first glance, this sounds illogical. Even if he kills the murderer, his wife will never come back. Wouldn't he never be able to get over this grief?

But behind the seemingly contradictory statements, he hides his desire for redemption. He regrets not accompanying her to London and hates himself for not being able to protect his beloved, so he must complete the arduous task himself to regain his inner peace.

As the psychologist said: This has nothing to do with justice, it all comes down to your heart. I can help you, but ultimately it depends on you.

The doctor certainly did not encourage him to seek revenge, but unexpectedly pointed out the only way for him to redeem himself - as a powerless civilian, he challenged the methods of the field agents and sent the villains to hell one by one with his own hands.

Such motivation allows Charlie to break away from the stereotyped revenge machines on the screen. Under the thrilling and murderous scenes of punishing evil, the movie secretly tells the story of a lonely man saving himself. A man who is about to drown in despair relies on his strong intelligence and amazing action to pull his heart out of the quagmire.

During the operation in a foreign country, Charlie keeps hallucinating that his deceased wife appears beside him. This does not help the tense and exciting atmosphere, but makes the heartbreaking art film underneath loom. Rami Malek's performance makes Charlie's huge inner pain overflow the screen, adding persuasiveness to his risky behavior.

The film is based on both the original novel and the original movie, and is a commercial film produced by Fox, so there is basically no suspense as to whether the protagonist's lone wolf action can succeed.

Therefore, the literary story line becomes particularly important, creating the biggest uncertainty in the plot - whether Charlie has the courage to shoot the bandit leader in person.

The instructor who has seen countless people has already seen through his nature, so we are actually praying that he does not become the cold-blooded killer he has never been. That is not his way of dealing with problems, and it cannot bring him real relief.

Will Charlie lose himself in the brutal execution, or will he be loyal to his heart and complete revenge in his own way and principles? This is more worrying than whether he can successfully track down the murderer. In the extremely cruel fight of violence, only when he can keep himself can revenge be a complete victory, and it will be enough to comfort his wife's soul in heaven.

Therefore, until the last scene where everyone knows that the game is a battle of wits, even though the ending is already determined, it still makes people concentrate and hold their breath.

The original novel and the original movie were created in the early 1980s and have a strong Cold War style. The power of the cryptographer's mind is limited, and the plot is far less dramatic than this new version.

In today's highly information-based age, electronic devices, the Internet and encryption technology can have greater destructive power than knives and bullets, and a person's wisdom has a stronger place to be used. Charlie can more easily transform himself into a Terminator armed with his brain.

If his trick to delay time for his superior was due to his professional skills, home field advantage and long-term planning, then when he entered a foreign country with a fake identity where he was unfamiliar with the place, his performance was still much more powerful than the character in the original movie.

Even though his marksmanship is a complete joke and his physical training has not been effective, it is easier for the audience to believe such a plot: those ruthless thugs will become ducks on the chopping block in front of him and be eliminated with a precise efficiency that is almost like a professional killer, even if it is not done overnight.

When he first arrived in Paris, he was still a layman in tracking, breaking into, and escaping (the old version of the protagonist could unlock the door in an instant), and he made many mistakes in his panic. However, when he went to the rehabilitation hospital to deal with the pollen threat, he had a relatively complete disguise and plan, but he still needed physical struggle and luck to complete it by accident.

In the next cool pool explosion (which is also the highlight of the original movie), he has already begun to show the style of a professional spy. He acted according to circumstances from his appearance to his departure, and he escaped without any danger. After experiencing the battle royale in the beach house and losing his partner's support, his skill points soared. He calmly set up the explosion trap, pressed for clues in an orderly manner, and finally slowly left the explosion area, controlling the situation almost at the textbook level.

To be precise, such rapid progress by an outsider is bound to be suspected of cheating, but Charlie's IQ of 170, his extreme grief and trance, and his determination to die rather than surrender, make me believe that he is such a gifted intelligence genius, and that I can share his encouragement and inspiration that "when a man wants justice, the whole world has to make way."

Following Charlie's footsteps of revenge, we witness him bending down and immersing himself in the game of espionage, witnessing the deaths of criminals one after another, witnessing the collapse of the conspiracy, and the people who cared about him reappearing with full blood, until finally seeing him sitting in the cabin and rushing into the blue sky, with inspiring music sounding.

The movie swept away the two hours of coldness and depression, like a long and arduous psychological healing. Charlie was once wrapped in the darkness of despair and almost suffocated, but this darkness was finally penetrated by the sunlight.

In 2002, I was still in junior high school, attending a boarding school where I went home once a month. As usual, while waiting for the bus, I would go to the video store across the street to look through DVDs, which were two yuan each. That’s when I discovered a movie called The Bourne Supremacy. After I got home and watched it, I was shocked. The protagonist of the movie was neither like the image of an agent in my impression nor like a common killer. He was just an ordinary passerby. However, he was able to use the things around him to quickly and efficiently complete tasks that only professional killers could do. The movie used a lot of handheld shaking shots to create a news documentary-like texture. At the same time, the content reflected in the movie, such as the self-erasure within the system, was incredible even today, 23 years later, when I think back to it in 2002. In 2007, I was in high school. When the winter vacation was approaching, I was at my high school classmate's house in Yuci, cleaning the room with him. The next day, I had to go back to my hometown. That night, because his family had a computer, we watched movies all night. I chose "Die Hard 4". When watching the movie, the villain in the movie could modify the information of the city's traffic lights, municipal pipelines, etc. by operating the computer buttons, creating extremely terrifying disaster scenes. At that time, I thought, is it really possible for this information to be taken over by others? If it is really taken over, will it really cause such great harm? At that time, I had not yet gone to college and had not learned the relevant knowledge of urban planning. Based on my current work experience, this situation is entirely possible. At that time, my friend and I were panicked and stunned. When we went out the next day, we even felt that Bruce Willis would suddenly rush out to save the chaotic traffic lights. "Die Hard 4" made me feel the irresistible city-level oppression faced by the protagonist, and it also triggered my thinking and concerns about reality.

1. The evolution of technological oppression Since those two viewing experiences in 2002 and 2007, this kind of content that can make me feel extremely terrified and seems to pose a potential threat to real life has rarely appeared. From junior high school to high school, and now in 2025, it is difficult for a movie to touch me like this. It was not until the documentary "Citizenfour" appeared that I had a similar feeling again. This documentary tells the story of Snowden in detail. At that time, I wondered if someone would steal my account if I entered the password into the camera at home? At that time, it was not like the current browser, which could take over a large number of account passwords and help users automatically fill in and record. At that time, everyone was thinking about how much protection those password technologies could provide us, and how much content in daily life would be captured by public cameras. To what extent did the technology develop at that time, so that others could obtain things like vlog content and call information? After all, this is a documentary based on a real global sensation, which really makes me shudder. Apart from this, no other movie can bring me this sense of pressure.

For example, David Fincher, who I like very much, has made a movie called "The Hitman" about killers, and also used the male lead of the "Prometheus" series to star in it. But this film relies more on killer-related content and hearty visual effects to show a killer who offends many people because of ordinary work in a slightly pedantic killer system, and finally overthrows the leaders from top to bottom in anger, conveying the concept that killers are also "workers". There is also a director who made "Before Sunrise", "Before Sunset" and "Before Midnight", which amazed countless men and women, and also made a movie called "The Hitman". The film tells the story of a person who loves acting in daily life, who pretends to be an agent with his life skills to assist the police station in completing tasks without really doing it. In the process of pretending to be an agent, he relied on his talent and ability to escape danger again and again. In the end, the audience couldn't help but wonder whether such a "drama queen" in reality is really capable of doing this job, because the ending shows that this is adapted from a real prototype.

In addition, Mission Impossible and the James Bond series have fallen into an awkward situation in my opinion. Young people don't like to watch them, and the elderly find them lacking in freshness. After careful review, apart from Citizenfour, there is really no other genre that can make me feel the real horror of reality.

Just yesterday afternoon, I watched the movie "The Spy" with my nephew and college classmates. After watching it, we talked about it and felt that it had been a long time since we had a movie that made us feel that the technology used by the protagonist and other content had a certain realistic horror meaning. In recent years, the killer movies are either too flashy, exaggerated and false. Although they can make the audience admire the protagonist and think that it is a good killer movie, the real sense of horror is rare. On the one hand, with the explosion of Internet information, we see all kinds of handicraft masters and people with special skills emerging in an endless stream, so we are no longer surprised to see characters with special abilities in movies. On the other hand, with the reduction of the price of cameras, families can buy surveillance cameras for dozens of yuan, but the content has been spread to the Internet, and related news has appeared from time to time. We really feel that life is obviously different from the beginning of the century. Everyone is already in an era full of truth, but it is difficult to touch the truth.

2. Amateur aesthetics with its own background music Today is April 13, 2025, and the movie diary I want to record is about "The Spy". Before the movie started, my friend asked me, "Why does the title sound so much like an online movie?" I told him that it was not a domestic movie, but a foreign one. In fact, there are many online movies abroad, and many movies produced by Netflix belong to this category. The name of this foreign movie does feel a bit tacky. I asked my friend to open the English poster to see the original name, and found that it was "amateur", which means "amateur player". My friend said that if it was translated into "amateur player", he would have a stronger desire to watch it than "The Spy". At that time, I didn't quite understand why it was translated like this. After watching it, I realized that the "spy" here is not the "disc" in "Mission Impossible", but the "spy" in "The Bourne Supremacy". Perhaps it also tried to establish a close connection with the American TV series "Mr. Robot", which was produced by the protagonist before he won the Oscar, so it took a somewhat middle school name like "The Spy", using the continuity of our language habits to make the audience associate and better understand the style of the film.

From a stylistic point of view, this film uses a lot of night scenes and handheld photography techniques, which is in line with "Jason Bourne". If the protagonist is changed to Jason Bourne, we can accept it and even feel that it is not inconsistent to make it a sequel. However, the film shows a brand new character image.

When watching the movie, my friend whispered to me several times that he particularly liked the background music of the protagonist. Indeed, whether it is the 007 series or the protagonist of "Jason Bourne", they need a theme song that is extremely brainwashing and can stand the test of time. At the end of the film, we saw that "The Man from London" would have a sequel. At the end, the protagonist's coach appeared and said something after getting in the car, suggesting that there would be more stories to come. The background music of the killer role played by the leading actor this time has the charm of agents and killer movies in the last century. At the same time, the music incorporates the catchy rhythms and drums of modern rap music, but it does not give people a strong sense of oppression like the symphony of 007. It lays out the theme song for a long time, and before the protagonist's exclusive soundtrack appears, it first uses some rhythms to guide the audience into the music. When the protagonist's face appears, the music starts, and the melody of the violin assists in time, creating a very elegant otaku music atmosphere. This unique music setting plays an excellent auxiliary role in character creation.

The original name of this film is "Amateur", and the quality of "amateur" runs through the whole film. When watching the film, my friend said that he always felt that the protagonist would make a complete counterattack in the next second like Iron Man with a jet pack on his back. However, the protagonist is a slightly timid and cowardly computer geek from beginning to end, and the actor also adopted this performance style. Even if the protagonist has one or two relatively successful actions, his amateurism, tension and great pressure can still be seen from the subtle reactions such as the twitching of his apple muscles. Even if the final revenge is completed, it is not like 007, accompanied by fireworks and champagne, but accompanied by the trumpet-like music of victory horns, the roar of helicopters, and the grand scene of large drones rotating and circling on the sea. The film presents an extremely restrained style. This quality is in line with the cold thriller and cold pressure in the "Bourne" series.

The leading actor's performance is excellent. He gradually reveals his alien, lonely and unsociable state in "Mr. Robot" through his expression and performance, which also becomes part of the suspense of the film. On the one hand, the story setting does not take a grand and open route; on the other hand, the protagonist's performance fits the story world of this character, which makes people feel deeply convinced.

3. When technology takes over the world Having said so much, I still have to go back to what I mentioned at the beginning. The most critical point of this film is that it truly shows the impact of existing technology and technological power on life, and the horror brought by this impact is similar to that conveyed by the three movies I mentioned earlier, "Die Hard 4", "Jason Bourne" and "Citizenfour". These three movies make us feel the impact of technological development on life, the moral and ethical dilemmas caused by it, and the tense atmosphere. In "The Man from Shanghai", this impact is pushed to the extreme. I even thought that when the streaming version of this movie is released, I must take screenshots frame by frame for analysis. Why? Because I am engaged in game scene design, many of the technologies presented in the film are more or less used in our work, and I need to learn the three-dimensional visualization form of this movie.

Take the common facial modeling as an example. It is no exaggeration to say that if you take a circle of photos of your face, your face can be modeled. Nowadays, the pixels of mobile phones are as high as hundreds of millions, and Unreal has a technology called Meta Human. Although it is not directly made from photos, Meta Human can already create CG-level digital people. This is not the simple effect in editing software that only moves the mouth based on the photo, but it can obtain accurate information from every angle of the person in all directions. Whether it is infinitely magnifying every pore or zooming out the details behind the lens, they are all clearly visible. Digital human technology has developed to this point.

Furthermore, the operation of the protagonist in the film when restoring the scene is also amazing. He calls the cameras at various locations for analysis and calculation, superimposes the sound field obtained from the distant cameras, and restores the most realistic on-site human voice content. As long as there are enough on-site recording equipment, the clarity of the restored sound can be guaranteed. What is even more terrifying is that as long as there are enough cameras on the scene, the content between the single pictures can be supplemented through technology. This technology is called Gaussian splashing, and before it there is a three-dimensional reconstruction technology called oblique silhouette. At present, based on the computing power of personal computers, it may take several hours to reconstruct a scene in three dimensions, but for departments with supercomputers, three-dimensional reconstruction can be completed almost in real time. In other words, whether it is through oblique photography or Gaussian splashing technology to achieve three-dimensional scene restoration, it is not difficult. At a road intersection, as long as there are three or four surveillance cameras, any angle of the intersection can be inferred and restored using algorithms and other means. In fact, some domestic positions are also recruiting relevant talents to improve this type of technology.

For example, in the past, when shooting the classic bullet-dodging scene in "The Matrix", it was necessary to take a large number of photos around the action subject in a whole circle, but only a short "bullet time" effect of one or two seconds could be restored. But now it is different. With computing power, only a small number of shots are needed to achieve this effect. In basketball games, the Olympics and other events, Intel also uses related technologies to realize browsing and switching at any angle after freezing the picture. This technology is now quite common.

In the film, the protagonist shuttles through multiple locations, involving elements such as positioning, drones, and the sea surface, and participates in specific actions. For military enthusiasts, these scenes may be commonplace. As a drone player, I have also used drones to shoot videos. Once, I used a dozen seconds of drone video material to successfully restore the appearance of my hometown homestead, and made a video titled "When a Modeler Wants to Go Back to His Hometown in Shanxi" and released it, which also received more than 5,000 views. At the same time, I also shared the entire technical implementation process online.

So I think that the content created by the CGUI team of "The Manhunt" is not a random UI like some movies. Although movies like "Iron Man" give people a cool and high-tech feeling, "The Manhunt" designs the UI based on existing technology and tests the content, which is very convincing and closely related to our current work and life.

In general, I don't know whether "The Man Who Killed" will attract many viewers, but for those who pay attention to movies like "Die Hard 4", "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Citizenfour" that I mentioned earlier, this movie is worth watching. From it, you can understand the new form of action movies that are spawned by cutting-edge technology. After all, art comes from life. Even if you think the plot in the movie will not happen around you, it will inevitably trigger some thoughts. For example, who should control the security information collected by cameras in life? Technological development brings dividends. If managers only pursue result justice and ignore procedural justice, and abuse these technological dividends, who should supervise and restrain them? This is one of the core themes of "The Man Who Killed". Just like "the army is always changing", leaders change like water, while the grassroots personnel remain for a long time. How should the technology, capabilities and means mastered by groups like killers be managed and restrained? This is undoubtedly a major moral and ethical issue. While this movie makes people think deeply, it also provides a lot of content worth pondering. It also echoes the phenomena of inaction, bureaucracy, and deductions at all levels that we see in daily life. It is indeed worth watching.

The above is my viewing record of "The Daredevil".

After Jason Statham told us not to mess with money couriers, drivers, beekeepers, construction workers, etc., the new film "The Man from Shanghai" starring Oscar winner Rami Malek tells us not to mess with programmers, especially the wives of genius programmers. A skinny programmer who can't fight or shoot relies on high-tech hacking methods to carry out a "high IQ and calm revenge" that subverts the narrative of Hollywood revenge movies. He traveled thousands of miles to many countries to not only avenge his deceased wife, but also resisted and avenged the damage of individual rights to the authoritarian system and collective interests under the protection of officials.

Director James Harveys presents transnational murder chase scenes in London, Rome, Paris, Turkey and other places with a compact rhythm and highly tense shots. The scenes such as the explosion of the high-altitude swimming pool, the street chase, and the car-racing escape are full of tension. The film strengthens the depressing atmosphere through the cold tones and the composition of the confined space, while using music and sound effects to highlight the psychological fluctuations of the characters, creating a viewing experience that emphasizes both suspense and emotion.

Rami Malek plays Charlie, who transforms from a fragile programmer who lost his wife to a persistent Avenger, giving a delicate yet explosive performance. I was surprised to see the beautiful goddess Rachel Brosnahan, who only played a cameo role, in the new Superman movie. Their rivalry added a bit of relaxation and warmth to the rather tense story rhythm.

Can constant revenge fill the growing void after losing a loved one? When digital technologies such as algorithm decryption, digital tracking, and deep fake face swapping become weapons of investigation and counter-investigation, where are their boundaries? The film's focus and thinking on the ethics of science and technology and big data justice in today's digital age make it a screen masterpiece that cannot be missed in 2025.

It looks like a very exciting movie. There is an original English novel, but unfortunately there is no Chinese version yet. Because it focuses on psychological description, we cannot analyze the plot with the logic of professional spy movies, because the logic is not tenable at all... Hahahaha... The intelligence agency of a top capitalist country is in internal strife, but a programmer who is a master of decryption and has an IQ of almost 200 becomes a lone hero to catch criminals who traffic in arms across borders? Novels can't be so exaggerated... So the original novel is about the inner grievances and psychological growth of spies or agents. Therefore, at the end, when it comes to killing people, it is better to have others do it for you or use more advanced methods to relieve the inner pressure of watching multiple people being killed. So in the end, the male protagonist was unable to open the gun directly at the gang's biggest leader (because the male protagonist called the police uncle in advance!), which can be regarded as confirming the logical closed loop of the psychological barrier of technical killers.

The male lead is the lead singer of "Bohemian Rhapsody". He is not very strong, but has very big eyes. He is not handsome at first glance, but he is quite tasteful and charming. He is quite outstanding in his persistence in doing big things and in psychological drama. The supporting roles are all big names, including the heroine of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the protagonist of The Matrix, and the father in Call Me by Your Name. The actors and scenes are quite spectacular.

As for spy novels, I have only read John le Carré's "The Spy Who Came from Berlin", which describes the inner thoughts of spies vividly and meticulously. Of course, the endings of spies are often not good, or they end up in misery, or they disappear in the crowd under an assumed name for the sake of national interests. They are dedicated people who cannot have names, and it is their professional attribute to become tools for the struggle between countries. If they succeed, they cannot be famous, and if they fail, they will lose their lives. This movie only reflects the tip of the iceberg of the spy profession, and the description of the agents is more emotional, and the plot is even more romantic, but I watched it for the sake of the light version of excitement, and it felt pretty good. It can be regarded as the first relatively refreshing theater movie in April.

In "The Man from Nowhere", Rami Malek created the most "atypical" avenger in the history of spy movies - programmer Charlie, an "amateur" who can't even hold a gun steadily, but has completed the deconstruction of traditional violent narratives in the torrent of data12. Director James Harveys uses a cold perspective like "Black Mirror" to turn hacker intrusion into a visual spectacle: the screen with waterfalls of code pouring down, the map where virtual and real interweave, making each digital murder as elegant and deadly as a symphony13. The film abandons the luxury cars, beauties and explosion special effects, and instead focuses on the transformation of the "weak hero" of the technology geek: from a cowardly husband curled up on the sofa to a dark hunter who uses a remote control to detonate a high-altitude swimming pool, Malek uses twitching fingertips and bloodshot eyeballs to interpret how hatred and obsession force ordinary people into precision instruments12. The essence of this revenge is the hedge between technology and power. Charlie’s identity as a CIA programmer makes him well versed in system loopholes. He uses code as a scalpel to accurately dissect the hypocrisy of the bureaucratic machine. The car accident caused by the traffic light and the “teleportation” achieved by tampering with the surveillance are all black humor of fighting violence with violence in the digital age.13 The repeated flashes of his wife’s illusion cast a sad filter on the cold and hard technological war: when all weapons are forged by love and hate, revenge becomes the most private mourning ceremony.23 The controversy among film critics focuses on the “Swiss cheese loopholes” in the plot logic, but it is precisely this clumsiness that distinguishes Charlie from Bond and Bourne, making him a more realistic “civilian sanctioner”.45 Just like the metaphor of the cracked glass of the swimming pool: the civilized order seems indestructible, but in fact it collapses at a single blow, and the breaker may only need a line of code and a broken heart.15