Former lovers face-off in a melodramatic spy thriller that's not nearly as clever as it thinks. All the Old Knives has Chris Pine interrogating Thandiwe Newton over a picturesque dinner with deadly consequences. The film flashes back to a horrific terrorist hijacking that changed the course of their heated romance. Based on the novel by Olen Steinhauer, All the Old Knives triggers raw emotions with frightening scenes aboard the captured plane. That doesn't carry over to the trite mystery at the center of the plot. The film moves painfully slow to a conclusion that was obvious in the first act.
In 2012 Vienna, Austria, Islamic terrorists hijack a Turkish airline, Flight 127, at the airport. The CIA station at the US embassy springs into action. The terrorists kill innocents to prove they're serious. They post their savagery online and to the press. Eight years later at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, former Vienna station chief, Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne), brings in clandestine operative Henry Pelham (Chris Pine). Both men were part of the Vienna team. New evidence has surfaced that the terrorists may have had help from someone on the inside. Wallinger tasks Henry with investigating two former agents on their team. Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), his second in command, and Compton's protégé, Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton). Henry's girlfriend at the time, she dumped him and left the agency shortly after the incident.
Henry travels to Carmel, California, to question Celia. Who's now married with two young children. They meet at a fancy restaurant on the water for dinner. The ex-lovers initially hide their buried feelings; but old fires burn deep. Henry wants her to recount everything she can remember about that fateful day. Celia is alarmed that she and Bill are under suspicion. Innocent people were murdered because of the mole's treachery. She understands the dire penalty for the guilty.
Temporal Jumps in All the Old Knives
All the Old Knives jumps back and forth in time. We see the characters differing perspectives of the hijacking and the events leading up to it. The present-day dinner is also punctuated with scenes of Henry and Celia remembering their intense passion for each other. The goal being for Henry to ferret out the truth and find out if Celia betrayed her country. Or if she's innocent and someone else cleverly staged her as a suspect.
The lovers torn apart by tragedy and espionage might have worked if not for key revelations at the beginning of the film. These clues, if you're paying attention, shine a glaring early spotlight on the mole's identity. You don't need Sherlock Holmes for this one. Then you have to wade through the dinner's mushy remembrances for the lead characters to figure it out. These scenes are sluggish. The constant cuts to the Vienna hijacking exacerbates their banality. It also doesn't help that the film never establishes any baseline exposition for their romance. We just know they're a couple that constantly make love; while dealing with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who are killing people.
The brutal scenes inside the airplane are tough to watch. The unsparing imagery draws a 9/11 comparison that didn't sit well with me. Filmmakers need to tread carefully with these themes and depictions. It felt exploitative here.
All the Old Knives is a production of Barry Linen Motion Pictures, Big Indie Pictures, Entertainment One, and Amazon Studios. It will have an April 8th streaming release exclusively on Prime Video.