In an age where everyone wants their own John Wick, The Amateur’s Rami Malek and James Hawes were eager to take another route.

Inspired by Robert Littell’s 1981 homonymous spy novel and Charles Jarrott’s own big-screen adaptation that same year, Malek and his director, Hawes, relied on The Amateur’s foundational premise as a jumping-off point for their modernized take. Upon losing his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) in a terrorist attack, CIA cryptographer Charlie Heller ( Malek) strongarms his ambivalent bosses into green-lighting his own personal revenge mission. Thus, in the newly released trailer (below), the viewer is conditioned to expect the trope where Heller transforms himself into a one-man killing machine. But he’s quickly in for a rude awakening by way of Laurence Fishburne’s CIA instructor character.

Heller instead returns to his existing core competencies involving computers and technology, and thanks to Malek’s Emmy-winning role as...