April 17, 2025 – There is an unwritten rule in Hollywood these days that every spy story has to include a conspiracy subplot, and this one does, of course. I long for the days when it was just spy versus spy, the good guys against the bad guys. Then again, it is getting hard to find any good guys these days.

CIA analyst Charlie Heller (played by Rami Malek of “Bohemian Rhapsody”) discovers the existence of a rogue operation in the agency shortly before his wife is murdered in a London terrorist attack. He uses his insider access and knowledge to force his guilty superiors to enable him to go after his wife's killers.

His superiors, Alex Moore (Holt McCallany of “The Iron Claw”) and Caleb Horowitz (Danny Sapani) allow Charlie to undergo spy field work training, hoping to either discourage him from his revenge mission, or to give them time to find the evidence of their secret rogue operation that he has hidden from them.

Veteran spy Robert Henderson is assigned the duty of training Charlie in the art of spy craft. Later, Henderson is ordered to neutralize Charlie, but before he can, Charlie escapes to Europe, where he begins pursuing his wife's killers, with Henderson in pursuit.

Charlie finds an ally in Inquiline (played by Caitríona Balfe of “Belfast”) a mysterious rogue operative who has been supplying him with top secret information. Everyone else, including local police, the CIA and the terrorists he is pursuing, are all trying to stop him. Since Charlie is an amateur when it comes to this spy stuff, he keeps getting caught, but somehow, he always gets away, or turns the tables on his opponents. He is very smart, but also very lucky.

The plot is not very believable, or very satisfying, since Charlie does not seem to mind the fact that innocent people get killed in the course of his quest. It is, however, an entertaining adventure, with a few surprises along the way. One surprise is the role of Charlie's friend, a spy known as “The Bear,” played by Jon Bernthal of “The Accountant” movies. I thought I knew what role this character was going to play in this story, but I guessed wrong.

Another surprise is the confrontation between Charlie and his nemesis, Horst Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg of “Bones and All”). This confrontation did not play out the way I thought it would. This is one of those movies that falls into a gray area between a high C+ and a low B. Since I don't use the B-minus rating, I will rate this a B.

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