In this thriller, Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine work to out-smolder and outwit each other as old C.I.A. colleagues and former lovers catching up over dinner.
Espionage thrillers usually traffic in globe-trotting mayhem, so in “All the Old Knives,” it’s refreshing to find one whose main ingredients are two stars out-smoldering each other over dinner.
Chris Pine plays Henry, a C.I.A. operative. Thandiwe Newton plays Celia, a colleague who left the agency after their team in Vienna failed to resolve a flight hijacking that ended in mass fatalities. The present action is set eight years later. The head of their division (Laurence Fishburne) has learned that a mole may have fed information to the perpetrators. If it was Celia, Henry, her former lover, is ideally situated to catch her in a lie.
So the two old flames meet in a water-view restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., to gab about how fresh the fish is, how good the bacon on Henry’s appetizer smells and whether Celia leaked secrets to international terrorists. Flashbacks show us who was where and when. And apart from a show-offy (apparent) single take that swans around the Vienna office introducing personnel, the director, Janus Metz, working from a screenplay by Olen Steinhauer (who also wrote the novel), mostly keeps things fast and easy, making everything look like a magazine spread.
One downside of the small scale is that it only allows for a handful of suspects; the incriminating call Celia may have placed could just as easily have come from her boss (Jonathan Pryce, delivering infinitely subtle variations on how to act nervous in every scene). While “All the Old Knives” keeps cleverly resetting the table it’s laid out, it can’t fundamentally alter the meal.
All the Old Knives
Rated R. Sex, with a dash of Viennese sophistication. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters and on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
