Somewhere between the slow-burn espionage thrills of Slow Horses and a full-bore action-thriller like Taken, you’ll find The Amateur, a spy thriller that asks what would happen if your head of IT at work suddenly turned into Jason Bourne.
That man is Rami Malek’s Charlie Heller, a CIA cryptographer who absconds from Langley’s sub-basement level to go on an off-the-books mission of vengeance when his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is gunned down at a London hotel.
Cue a tour of European cities that boasts plenty of surprises of its own. Counterfeit passports in hand, Heller travels to London, Paris, Marseille, Istanbul, Madrid and Russia looking for the men (and women) responsible for her death.
‘I didn’t want this to be the tourist trail of cities,’ explains director James Hawes (Slow Horses) of his choice of locations. ‘There wasn't going to be Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower and the Blue Mosque.’
With three secret service operatives as consultants and a little filmmaking sleight-of-hand, Hawes and his team set about piecing together a chess board of locations that were both authentic to the espionage world of the film and had the widescreen allure of a Bond movie. ‘I wanted to deliver the exotic, the adventurous, and the breadth of the world,’ says Hawes. He shares how they did it…
Where was The Amateur filmed
England
Charlie and Sarah Heller’s Virginia home – near Faversham, Kent
We meet Charlie at home with his wife Sarah (Brosnahan) as she prepares for her fateful trip to London. In the film, the house is in Virginia, handy for his job as a CIA cryptographer at Langley. In reality, it’s in Kent. ‘It's a private house which somebody has built and nurtured in that American style,’ explains Hawes. ‘It felt absolutely possible that this house was in rural Virginia.’
CIA headquarters, Langley – Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
And Langley, where Heller crosses swords with his big boss Alex Moore (Holt McCallany), wasn’t filmed in the US either. ‘The car park was the old Heinz headquarters in Hayes, the entrance is Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, and the canteen is St Anthony's College, Oxford,’ reveals Hawes. The old nuclear base at Aldermaston used for interior Langley scenes. ‘We took all those bits of architecture and stitched them together so it feels like one building.’
The Christopher Hotel in London – St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London
The Christopher Hotel, where Sarah is caught up in an armed raid, is actually London’s St Pancras Hotel. ‘St Pancras did not want us to use their name,’ says Hawes. ‘We tried things like “The Royal Railway Hotel” and “The Great Midland Hotel”, [but] many of them exist.’ In the movie, the sequence is shown via CCTV and multiple cell phones. ‘I passed out two dozen iPhones to the crew, and there was a competition for who got the best shot,’ says the director. ‘[The winner] got a bottle of champagne.’
The CIA training site at Camp Peary – Suffolk
Heller gets a brief induction into the art of killing from Lawrence Fishburne’s veteran agent at CIA training facility, Camp Peary, aka ‘The Farm’. ‘This is in Suffolk at a retired air base,’ says Hawes. ‘It was a joy to have Lawrence. We were in a hotel in Suffolk last January, Christmas decorations still up, and in walks Morpheus!’
The Georgetown restaurant – Smith & Wollensky, London
The terse Washington DC lunch between Moore and Julianne Nicholson’s CIA Director was filmed at Smith & Wollensky in London. The scene has Holt McCallany’s CIA man wolfing down a plate of pasta. 'My god, Holt ate bowl after bowl of pasta,’ laughs Hawes. ‘Normally, actors will say: “Could I just eat an apple, please?” Holt is such a committed actor.’
The Madrid hotel – Embassy Gardens, London
The Amateur’s stand-out set piece has Heller detonating a sky pool in a Madrid hotel. You’ll find the real sky pool at Embassy Gardens in Nine Elms, adjacent to the US Embassy. ‘I was amazed they agreed to us doing [this],’ says Hawes of the three-day shoot. ‘The residents seemed pretty amused.’
The Marseille clubs – Fabric and Blondies, London
After a violent Parisian interlude, Heller heads south to Marseille and tackles his PTSD with a proper club night out. The exteriors were shot in the French city, but both of the venues he visits – a superclub and a French hip hop dive club – are in London. The former is the legendary Fabric (also featuring in season 3 of Gangs of London); the latter is Hackney’s Blondies. Expect metal rather than hip hop there, mind you.
France
Heller’s Paris surveillance – L’Enclos de Ninon, Paris
Hawes shot in and around this elegant cake shop in the 5th. In the movie, it’s frequented by one of Heller’s targets. Ninon, which shares its name with a famous 17th century author and courtesan, has its own US connection: it’s known for its NYC-inspired cake recipes (try the pumpkin pie).
Inquiline’s Turkish beach hideaway – Martigues, Côte d’Azur
This is where the geography gets a little more complicated. Heller’s efforts to track down the people who killed his wife lead him to an anonymous informant – codename ‘Inquiline’ – to a beach near Istanbul. Real location? Martigues, near Marseille. ‘[Our production designer] Maria Djurkovic found this extraordinary village by a huge oil refinery,’ says Hawes.
Turkey
Heller’s trip to find Inquiline – Istanbul, Turkey
The novel The Amateur is based on, Robert Littell’s 1981 spy thriller, revolves around the Cold War hotbed of Prague. ‘These days you're more likely to get run over by a bunch of Liverpudlians on a beer bike,’ notes Hawes of the decision to swap in Istanbul for the Czech city. ‘I liked the idea that Istanbul is on the edge of east and west, it has those links to Russia, and it feels that much that left much less filmed than Prague.’
The Russian dock scenes – Istanbul
The movie’s showdown in the Russian port of Primorsk was going to be filmed in Riga, until the Hollywood strikes, well, struck. Instead, Turkey stood in. ‘This is outside Istanbul, where conveniently there are quite a lot of Russian ships around,’ explains Hawes. ‘It feels like a dangerous place to be.’
One Primorsk scene sees Heller encountering Jon Bernthal’s mysterious CIA operative in a café. Amazingly, the interiors were filmed at Hanwell Cricket Club in England, though a duplicate was needed for exterior shots. ‘So we built Hanwell cricket pavilion on the side of a Turkish port,’ laughs Hawes of the solution.
Is there a trailer for The Amateur?
There is, and you can watch it below.
When is The Amateur out?
The film is in cinemas worldwide now. Read our review here.