The speed with which Charlie Heller reinvents himself from deskbound CIA decryption and analysis nerd to resourceful field agent with infallible explosives expertise and enough covert operations savvy to remain one step ahead of both killer mercenaries and shady Langley brass will make your head spin. But grief and a hunger for justice will do that to a man, especially one with the wired intensity of Rami Malek. As will the dictates of a globe-hopping revenge thriller like The Amateur, which remains enjoyable even as it becomes implausible.

The thing about James Hawes film of the 1981 Robert Littell novel is that while it prompts raised eyebrows with the contrivances of its plotting and the seeming ease with which the underestimated protagonist outwits everyone, it at least looks and feels like a real movie. That might sound like not much of a distinction. But in this age of assembly-line streaming originals that play like bland knockoffs of a dozen multiplex hits youve seen before, its not nothing, either. Hollywood used to churn out a few of these glossy, quasi-sophisticated adult action thrillers every year, full of marquee stars getting out of improbable scrapes and taking down bad guys. But they have largely gone the way of the dinosaur, so theres considerable pleasure in shoving handfuls of popcorn down your throat in between explosive set-pieces in cool locations, even if the uncanny luck of the techie hero is often hard to swallow.

Adapted by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli from espionage specialist Littells book previously filmed in a 1981 Canadian feature that starred John Savage and Christopher Plummer the material has been updated from its original Cold War backdrop to the present day.

Maleks Charlie lives in wedded bliss with Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan) in what looks like a restored Virginia farmhouse, where he tools around in the garage trying to get a banged up vintage plane she bought him as a birthday gift back into working order. If that was ever meant to have a significant plot function beyond one liberating (and lets be honest, cheesy) closing shot, it must have been discarded along the way.

Being somewhat travel-averse, Charlie declines to accompany Sarah to London, where shes speaking at a conference. But tragedy strikes when shes randomly taken hostage during a terrorist attack. At work, hes ushered by his supervisor, Moore (Hoyt McCallany), head of a shadowy special operations unit, into the office of CIA director Alice OBrien (Julianne Nicholson), where he watches in horror as the abduction and murder of his wife play out on CCTV footage.

While hes shattered by the loss, Charlie is also frustrated by the bureaucratic wall put up by Moore and his colleague Caleb (Danny Sapani), who tell him to stay in his lane and let them handle the investigation. Charlie does his own digging with tools from the CIA data base. When he goes to Moore and Caleb with positive IDs of the three people directly responsible for Sarahs death, they explain that they wont be going after her killers because they want to take out the whole network. But something smells fishy.

Working from redacted intel sent to him by a mysterious online asset known as Inquiline, Charlie uncovers compromising black ops information connecting Moore and Caleb to a recent drone strike in Islamabad attributed to insurgents in which American allies were killed. Hes sufficiently aware of CIA ruthlessness to know this puts him in danger.

Charlie blackmails Moore into sending him for field training so he can go after Sarahs killers himself, setting up a dead-man switch to release incriminating evidence to top investigative journalists should any harm come to him. Hes sent to Camp Peary, where hard-ass retired colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) oversees his training.

The script is smart enough not to try turning Charlie into Jason Bourne. Or not completely. For starters, he cant shoot for shit, and Henderson tells him he will never be a killer. But hes a quick study with IED assembly. When he figures out that his insurance against Moore and Caleb coming after him wont hold, Charlie flees the training facility with a pocketful of fake passports. His expert knowledge of cyber security helps cover his tracks.

Charlies pursuit of the killers takes him from London to Paris to Marseille, Madrid and Istanbul, where he connects with Inquiline (Caitrona Balfe) and discovers the lone wolf is motivated by her own grief. Theres humor in moments like Charlie watching a quick YouTube tutorial on how to pick a lock (Like and subscribe!) while breaking into an apartment or using facial recognition technology to confound Moore and Caleb as to his whereabouts.

But the escalating action, which continues in Romania and Russia, works best if you just stop thinking about how Charlie gets from one sticky situation to the next, with Henderson and eventually another agent on his tail.

Fortunately, Hawes puts his experience as a seasoned TV director on shows like Slow Horses, Black Mirror, Snowpiercer, Penny Dreadful and Doctor Who to good use in some fun action scenes that keep upping the mayhem, with lots of clever tech elements. A high-end Paris allergist clinic allows for the creative weaponization of pollen, while a luxury hotel swimming pool suspended like a glass bridge between two buildings presents a particularly splashy opportunity.

In terms of keeping Charlie a somewhat relatable everyman, it helps that his kills tend to be carried out from a distance. But the climax on a boat in the Baltic Sea, featuring Michael Stuhlbarg as an uncommonly contemplative Russian mercenary, stretches credibility to the breaking point.

Stuhlbarg is one of a handful of excellent but underused actors, along with Nicholson, Brosnahan (whose role is largely confined to flashbacks and heartsick fantasies) and Jon Bernthal as a rugged CIA field agent who appreciates Charlies tech skills. Only Balfe, McCallany and Fishburne have enough screen time and character development to prevent The Amateur from becoming a Rami Malek solo show.

That said, the movie is well-acted and Malek brings conviction to Charlies sense of loss, his quick-thinking intelligence, his ability to remain calm and focused even in hairy situations and his belief in justice, which gradually outweighs his need for revenge. The role is a good fit for the actor, and while I love a brawny Jason Statham beatdown, its a welcome change to see a revenge thriller in which the hero uses brains instead of fists or guns.

DP Martin Ruhe gives the movie a good-looking balance of sleek and gritty, with sharp location work in France and Turkey notably in a chase along the Istanbul seafront and England standing in serviceably for the rest of the stops. The most indispensable element to keep the action humming, however, is a big, bold score by Volker Bertelmann. Audiences nostalgic for 90s spy thrillers could do worse.