A melodramatic spy thriller in which former lovers confront one another, it is not as clever as it imagines. Chris Pine interrogates Thandiwe Newton over a picturesque dinner with life-threatening consequences in All the Old Knives. The movie takes us back to a devastating terrorist hijacking that changed their torrid love affair forever. A novel by Olen Steinhauer, All the Old Knives evokes strong emotions through its terrifying scenes on a captured airplane. However, this feeling doesn’t permeate into the hackneyed mystery at the plot center. It is a film that drags along until an ending that any audience could predict from its beginning.
In 2012 Vienna Austria, Islamic terrorists hijack Turkish Airlines Flight 127 on the runway. US embassy’s CIA station springs into action. To show they are serious about it, terrorists kill innocents. They broadcast their savagery online and send them to press offices for publication. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia eight years later, former Vienna station chief Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne) has enlisted Henry Pelham (Chris Pine), his clandestine operative agent. Both men were part of the Vienna team. Emerging new evidence indicates there might have been accomplices working within who aided these terrorists.Wallinger orders Henry to look into two ex-agents formerly with their team.Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), his second-in-command; and Compton’s protégé Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton). She left him when she quit her job after that fallout.
Henry goes down to Carmel California to talk to Celia.Now married with two little children.They meet for dinner at an upscale waterfront restaurant.Firstly, the former partners hold in their hidden romance but old flames never die out.Henry wants her to describe every single detail about that fatal day.Celia feels like she and Bill are being accused unjustly. Mole’s betrayal brought about the deaths of innocent people. She knows what punishment awaits the guilty.
All the Old Knives flip-flap through time itself with various scenes and perspectives concerning hijacking and everything that led to it. There are also cuts in real time of present day dinner interjected by Henry and Celia reminiscing about how they used to be so in love. It is, therefore, Henry’s work here to find out if Celia has been a spy for her country – or alternatively someone else set her up very cleverly as one.
However, lovers torn apart by tragedy and espionage could still have had some chance of working if there weren’t key revelations at the beginning of this film. Now, if you were paying attention, these hints would have given away who was behind it all long before they did come forward. It does not require Sherlock Holmes for this.The audience must then sift through mid-dinner remembrances between these main characters.The pacing slows down during such scenes.There might be repeated flashbacks to Vienna hostage drama; nevertheless their dullness is exaggerated.Plus it didn’t help that no standard exposition was ever laid out for their romance; we just know they are always making love while fighting Islamists killing lots of people.
Inside shots on board the airplane are hard-hitting.Therefore, I found some comparisons drawn from there to 9/11 inappropriate.Considering these themes and images should be highly handled by filmmakers.This appeared exploitative actually!!
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