Stefania Rosini/Amazon Studios
Danish filmmaker Janus Metz tries his hand at the spy vs. spy game with his latest film, All the Old Knives. Unlike others from the genre, this quieter, more self-reflective movie relies on conversation and a lot of wine as old wounds and lingering questions float overhead.
Chris Pine is Henry Pelham, an operative who has been tasked with determining whether someone from the CIA’s Vienna section was involved in a hijacking a decade ago. At the local airport, terrorists boarded a Turkish airline and took everyone hostage. But when the incident ended 24 hours later with the deaths of everyone on board, the operatives at the Vienna station were left haunted and the investigation revealed the hijackers likely had help from a mole.
Pelham’s boss, Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburn) tells him they have narrowed it down to two likely suspects: Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), one of the station’s old higher ups, or Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton), a former operative (and former lover) who left the game after the incident. Wallinger raises the stakes by explaining that the culprit, if there is one, can’t be arrested because of the embarrassment it would cause the agency. Instead, at Henry’s word, the guilty will be quietly, carefully dispatched.
Unfolding first like a series of disconnected pieces of memory, the narrative shifts between a pub in London and a pricey restaurant at Carmel-by-the-Sea on the California coast. Pine embraces Henry’s world-weariness. Years of covert service are etched into his face, the earned lines of understanding and experience. Though he moves easily and comfortably from one conversation to the next, it’s clear that he is very adept at hiding things, even from the woman he once loved, and probably still does.
Celia, on the other hand, did her best to leave that life behind. She’s now a married mother of two and though she still harbors regrets and trauma from her old life, the peace and tranquility of her idyllic seaside escape have, in some ways, helped her heal. Newton herself is an artist with a well-placed smirk, a raised eyebrow, a subtle tilting of the head. She never gives away more than Celia is willing to reveal. Whether sitting across a table and drinking expensive wine, or remembering stolen kisses years before, Pine and Newton are perfectly paired, driving forward a narrative that might otherwise have suffered from a lack of momentum.
Because All the Old Knives, for all its remembered violence and death, is a film that is content to sit still, to ponder, to carefully unfold like an old and delicate letter. Some viewers will go into this expecting Jack Ryan and explosions and loud demands for a confession. What they will find is something quite the opposite and yet, somehow, still compelling. Perhaps even more so.
Eventually the memories become more clear, expanding from flashes of images to full conversations. We spend a little more time in that London pub where a jumpy Bill Compton is more than willing to talk about the harder things and reluctant to discuss any of the topics that should be easy. But even while the answers to our questions start to reveal themselves, sometimes we just want more of Celia and Henry and a newly uncorked bottle and that table with the ocean view.
Adapted from the novel by Olen Steinhauer, Janus Metz gives us a spy movie that is less about terrorists and war and more about the high personal cost of the work and the impossibility of ever truly leaving it behind.
All the Old Knives is now in limited theatrical release and streaming on Prime Video.