All the Old Knives: Old-fashioned spy thriller with style and starpower

Starring Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton, All the Old Knives is the kind of old-fashioned film they don’t make for cinemas anymore.

There’s something old-fashioned about All the Old Knives, romance-cum-spy thriller starring Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton.

It’s a luxuriously paced adult drama with the confidence that its two leads can hold the audience as they dance around each other, barely concealing the pain of their complicated history.

All the Old Knives is a heady cocktail of chemistry and suspense, served up in a taut package. It’s the kind of movie that is rarely made for cinemas anymore, one that relies not on whiz-bang-flash but the charisma of its stars, the strength of its plotting and the style of its vibe. Increasingly, these mid-range movies (neither small indies nor tentpole blockbusters) are found on streaming services, as All the Old Knives is, in this case on Amazon Prime Video.

All the Old Knives stars Chris Pine. Picture: Amazon Prime Video

Pine and Newton play two former lovers and colleagues, Henry and Celia. They both worked for the CIA on the day terrorists hijacked a passenger flight where everyone on board was killed. Over the years, there have been hints about a mole inside the CIA who was involved.

Henry is tasked by his boss Vick (Laurence Fishburne) to set up an encounter with Celia to discern if she could be the betrayer.

Celia has left the spy game and is ensconced in suburban life with a husband and two children, but her bond with Henry remains strong, fuelled by what was unsaid and unresolved from their time together.

That connection complicates an already high-stakes cat-and-mouse game in a sumptuous restaurant set against an impossibly beautiful northern California sunset. Everything looks beautiful but the undercurrent is dark. Trust is in short supply.

The cat-and-mouse game between two old lovers. Picture: Amazon Prime Video

Screenwriter Olen Steinhauer (adapted from his book) and director Janus Metz Pedersen deftly balance the two timelines, weaving between the present-day interrogation and the past to slowly reveal what happened on that fateful day.

More significant than the “whodunit” is the why – and the unravelling of Henry and Celia’s relationship both in the past and as they sit across from each other in the present.

All the Old Knives doesn’t break the genre and it doesn’t have the pulse-racing action viewers might expect from the more muscular spy thrillers that litter the landscape, but it is satisfying thanks to the starpower of Pine and Newton.

Rating: 3/5

All the Old Knives is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video