All the Old Knives

As spies and ex-lovers, Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine craft a reserved chemistry in Janus Metz's romantic espionage thriller 'All the Old Knives'

The film is a compelling concept that doesn’t thread the needle of its competing impulses quite as gracefully as it might have, but driven by the imminently watchable Newton and Pine, it makes for the kind of adult-oriented storytelling one wishes there was more of these days. The film’s big love scene is more dramatic than erotic, though it does include a heat and passion that is missing from much of the rest of the film. Such is the aim of “All the Old Knives,” a cerebral thriller with an elegant sensibility directed by Janus Metz from a screenplay by Olen Steinhauer adapting his own novel.

Loves and loyalties collide in slow-motion for Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton in this sluggish CIA thriller with promise but no payoff.

Elsewhere, screenwriter (and author of the original novel) Olen Steinhauer could maybe have used some help to help tighten things up, just as director Janus Metz Pedersen is in sore need of an editor to lift the mood. It’s weird to see a male action star play someone their own age for once, and Pine settles into the more seasoned dramatic role well, but Newton outshines him. Walking into a bar that only serves wine to try and order a vodka martini, Henry Pelham (Pine) is a very Chardonnay 007 – colder, sadder and far less exciting than the stuff you see in other movies, though probably a lot more realistic.

The film then uses parallel timelines, cutting between the current conversation between Henry and Celia and extended flashbacks showing what they were doing ...

As espionage narratives go, “All the Old Knives,” which is based on the novel by Olen Steinhauer (who also wrote the screenplay), is closer to the more cerebral and realistic creations of John le Carré than the comic book fantasies of James Bond (underscored perhaps a bit too bluntly at one point where Henry attempts to order a vodka martini and is rebuffed). The early set-up scenes are reasonably intriguing but at a certain point, things just stop working. It soon becomes clear at least one of them knows more about what happened than they are letting on, and that the sumptuous feast they have been consuming will most likely prove to be the last meal for at least one of them. Henry is charged with interviewing the surviving members of the group—one mysteriously committed suicide a couple of months after the incident—to see if he can ferret out which one is guilty.

The way that The Hunt For Red October kicked off a series of Cold War thrillers, in the 1990s, that came out when the Cold War was already over, ...

All the Old Knives was written by Olen Steinhauer, who based it on his own novel, while its director is Janus Metz Pedersen, whose last film was Borg vs. The setup is that, about five years before the events of the film, terrorists hijacked a plane on the runway and everyone on board ended up dead. The way that The Hunt For Red October kicked off a series of Cold War thrillers, in the 1990s, that came out when the Cold War was already over, the new Amazon film All the Old Knives serves as a belated War on Terror thriller.

Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton's spy thriller on Amazon Prime Video All The Old Knives is out now - read the ending explained to find out whodunnit.

At the table, a dying Henry tells her he loves her and demands Celia leave the restaurant, which she does. In the aftermath of being tortured by the Russians, he and his family fled to Iran where his daughter died, because they couldn't get medicine for her thanks to US sanctions. Celia reveals that after their asset was killed, she went back to Henry's place and while he was showering, she heard his phone vibrate and saw that an Iranian phone number was calling. Back in the past, they receive another message from their asset on board, who now says that the hijackers in fact have a camera on the undercarriage, and he tells them to abort their mission. Her suspicion is confirmed when, later, the plane door opens and their asset is shot in the head and dumped onto the tarmac. In the 'present day' Henry also visits Bill, threatening him to turn on who Henry suspects is the mole: Celia.

All the Old Knives is now available to stream on Prime Video. Will the movie head to DVD and Blu-ray in the future? Here's what we can work out.

This is usually the case for theatrical releases, which All the Old Knives is not. We’ll also not likely see it arrive on Digital for the same reason. That leak cost the lives of more than 100 people on a flight, and the rogue CIA agent may be this veteran’s former lover.

Still, this lifeless espionage mystery has one or two things going for it.

All the Old Knives rustily crunches through its story of duplicitous spies covering up a terrorist attack. All the Old Knives is not related to Knives Out, but it does feature a mystery. Based on a spy novel inspired by real events, All the Old Knives hints at more interesting depths to the tragedy that took place. the duplicity…" "The lies… But then the movie invests in one of the most annoying plot mechanics of prestige TV shows: flashbacks.

Not necessarily the best of this genre, but All the Old Knives is a solid character drama benefiting from strong performances by a top-drawer cast.

As to that plot (with screenplay by Steinhauer himself), I’m not entirely sure how well it all holds together after a few hours to actually take stock of it, but certainly in the moment, there are enough twists and turns to justify the investment. In that sense, this is a role that feels uniquely suited to Pine, benefiting greatly from the almost-decade of fermenting since his Jack Ryan escapade. And as directed by Janus Metz Pedersen (whose 2017 film Borg/McEnroe I enjoyed quite a bit), All the Old Knives eschews the bombast and spectacle of Bond and Ryan in favor of a more intimate, quiet movie that lives largely in close-ups as various characters stare each other down across tables at restaurants and diners. It gets into the grittiness of spycraft – the emotional and psychological toll involved in moving living, breathing people hither and thither across an imaginary chessboard. But in the streaming age, such movies land on Amazon Prime, etc., garnering buzz for a week or two before getting subsumed by the next new thing and the exigencies of the algorithm. Just over eight years ago, Chris Pine starred in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, yet another in Paramount’s long line of attempts to reboot Tom Clancy’s everyman superspy.