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.

By Kharisma McIlwaine. *This review contains spoilers*. Betrayal is one of the worst aspects of the human experience, be it professional or personal.

“All The Old Knives” serves as a reminder to ask the hard questions from the people you love and to offer grace in the place of doubt. Celia and Henry play coy as they each attempt to excerpt information that will lead to the revelation of the mole. The revelation of the truth however, is devastating betrayal. During his quest for the truth, Henry travels from Austria to England to California. First, Henry interviews Bill Compton (Pryce), a retired former member of his team who currently resides in London. During his visit to Carmel-by-the-Sea in California, Henry is reunited with another CIA operative, his former colleague and ex-lover Celia Harrison (Newton). Sparks fly over dinner as the two talk about old times through a series of flashbacks. Embarrassed by the high-profile incident, the CIA is still dedicated to discovering the identity of the mole responsible. “All The Old Knives,” adapted from Olen Steinhauer’s novel of the same name, opens in 2012 inside the cabin of Flight 127, which is being hijacked.

The duo play ex-lovers and one-time colleagues Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison in the modern-day spy thriller that's based on the book of the same name by Olen ...

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.

This article discusses the ending of the Amazon film All the Old Knives, which will contain spoilers Ready Steady Cut film critic M.N. Miller said about.

She and the CIA have planned an operation to catch Henry as the mole. She begins to cry and is sick to her stomach. So, as he questions her at a bar in the middle of wine country in present-day, Henry begins to feel sick and starts bleeding from the nose. It was not Henry’s call, and he was already gone when he went to save him. It’s the same number she found when going through phone logs that she thinks is of the terrorist behind the plane jacking. It led to Henry, yes, Henry, being the mole.

In “All the Old Knives,” ex-lovers and spies Henry and Celia meet for dinner in an upscale California beach town. They reminisce, haltingly, but this is no ...

There’s a self-seriousness in the way they’ve been directed (they bring a more methodical energy to the table than Thompson and Rickman did in “A Song for Lunch”) that tends to suck all the tension from their spy vs. And then there’s decision to make the hijackers Muslim, a tired, reductive narrative go-to the script does nothing to deepen or complicate. Events from the day of the hijacking arrive in flashback, taking us away from the restaurant — a lovely space that is empty of people and visual interest — but the change of scenery doesn’t enliven things between Pine and Newton, who are left to do little more than inject some intensity into these underdeveloped characters. The intimacy’s the thing and the film spotlights a pair of actors who find disarming humor even in a dramatic setting that is both intoxicating and sometimes bordering on too much information. Celia (Thandiwe Newton) left the job years ago and shed her ties to the CIA in favor of marriage and children; Henry (Chris Pine) is still on the job and he’s been tasked with investigating a deadly airline hijacking from nearly a decade back, when they were both based out of Vienna. Turns out, there was a leak that sabotaged their efforts for a better outcome. In “All the Old Knives,” ex-lovers and spies Henry and Celia meet for dinner in an upscale California beach town.

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.

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.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — This week's new entertainment option includes a film you can see at the theaters or watch at home. “All the Old Knives” Grade 3 ...

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.

The year is 2011, and CIA agents Henry (Chris Pine) and Celia (Thandiwe Newton) are colleagues and lovers. But one fateful day, a terrible (fictional) terrorist ...

Plot twist: Celia tells Henry she knows he was the one who made the call on Bill’s phone, and that he is the mole who leaked the information about Ahmed to the terrorists. In the final scene, we see Vick get a call letting him know that Henry is dead, while Celia walks down the street, thinking about her past relationship with Henry. Then she goes home to her husband and child and goes back to her life. Remember that weird meeting Celia had with the Muslim Women’s Foundation? It turns out that while Celia was at that meeting, Henry was at a meeting of his own, with Ilyas Shishani, the man behind the attack. Then Henry gets a call from the assassin he hired, asking whether or not he should kill Celia. Henry is too far gone to answer, so in the end, the assassin does not kill Celia—but we’re left wondering what he would have said. Celia is devastated that Henry would try to pin this on her, and ruin her life when he knows she is innocent. At the same time, Henry seems to be ready to pin the leak on his aging colleague Bill Compton. After all, it was Bill’s phone that had a call to Tehran on the same day as the attack, and Bill does act pretty suspicious when Henry is interviewing him. In the flashbacks, we learn that on the day of the attack, Celia discovered the suspicious call to Tehran made from Bill’s phone on the call log. Read on for the All the Old Knives plot summary and the All the Old Knives ending, explained. At the end of this day horrible day, Henry and Celia share a desperate, passionate night together. In the present day, Celia tells Henry she doesn’t believe the man had information, and just wanted money—but Henry’s reaction suggests he knows something she doesn’t. Vick, the boss, stresses that no one else can know about Ahmed. Later, when Ahmed sends a new message to the CIA telling the agency to comply with all of the terrorists’ demands—in a completely different tone of voice—they suspect that the message is not really from him. Based on the novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer—who also adapted the screenplay—All the Old Knives is a quiet spy thriller directed by Danish filmmaker Janus Metz Pedersen. Most of the film is spent over the course of a dinner between Pine and Newton’s characters, as the two recall a traumatic day in their past lives as CIA agents and lovers.

Agents on hand include Henry Pelham (Pine), Celia Harrison (Newton) and Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce). The situation quickly goes south. It's tragic. And eight ...

Why? As Henry and Celia’s double-entendre dinner progresses, the scene cleverly segues from professional to personal interrogation: Hey, I know what happened back then was awful and a lot of innocent people died, but babe, why’d you leave me? All the Old Knives is a sexy and absorbing medium-hot potboiler that layers in a few too many flashbacks but nonetheless holds our interest. They sit down at a practically empty restaurant, the type that only has wine on the drink menu and where the server really gets into the details of the compote on this and the glaze on that. Our Take: It makes sense: How else do you expect two inordinately attractive human beings to relieve the stress of a high-tension CIA gig? As they eat dinner, feeding each other succulent forkfuls of locally sourced this and delicately coddled that, Henry and Celia drill into the this and that of the hostage tragedy, which are intricately entwined with some of the this and that of the drillings into each other. Like, take care of it take care of it?

The film takes place in two time periods, separated by six years. CIA operative Henry Pelham (Pine) is tasked by his Vienna station commander, Vick Wallinger ( ...

“All the Old Knives” embraces COVID limitations, whether they were a necessity or always a part of the story. But the vacant quality of the environment, mostly set-bound featuring sparsely inhabited locations, is consistent with the mysterious narrative. Closeups and motivated handheld camera movements mirror the unease of Pelham and Celia’s failed relationship. Despite his years of training and professional expertise, Pelham’s mental state requires alcohol to hush some of the voices from the past that still haunt him. Pelham’s deep-seated regret and longing for Celia have caused him to become embittered and sullen, unable to move on from the emotional wreckage. Six years earlier, the team failed to prevent the loss of more than 100 lives in a catastrophic plane hijacking.