‘All The Old Knives a great yarn mixed with heartbreaking romance’
Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton talk to Lauren Taylor about their new spy thriller
Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton’s chemistry was so instant, All The Old The Old Knives director Janus Metz says he felt “almost irrelevant to the situation because they were so into each other” during the pair’s first meeting.
“That’s when, as a director, you just step back with a big fat smile on your face and think, ‘Wow, this is really going to be great’,” he says.
Pine and Newton play CIA agents and ex-lovers, Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, in the book adaptation of spy thriller of the same name by Olen Steinhauer.
The two reconnect when the CIA discovers one of its agents leaked information that led to the deaths of more than 100 people when a plane was hijacked eight years earlier. Henry is assigned to root out the mole from among his former officemates at the agency’s Vienna station – which includes questioning his retired station colleague (and love of his life) Celia.
Star Trek star Pine, 41, describes the All The Old Knives as “a great yarn, a great drama, a great thriller – mixed in with an incredibly passionate, dramatic and heartbreaking romance.
“And that is precisely why I loved it,” he says. “This is one of the best scripts I’ve read in years. It’s what I would love to read on a plane, it would be something I’d want to watch on a Friday night.”
Over the course of an intimate dinner, we see the two seasoned spies cautiously reminisce about the past – both professionally and personally – while edging ever closer to the shocking truth behind the tragic incident. But Henry and Celia’s romantic history (and very present chemistry) can’t be ignored in their exploration of what happened.
Newton, 49, says the characters’ romantic chemistry balanced with the story’s simmering “whodunnit”’ tension was “really well choreographed”.
She says: “Janus [Metz] spent a lot of time thinking about the reveal of certain things. At what point should the audience know this?
“The script changed in tiny ways, right up until we finished, because he was so keen to give the audience the full, ‘ahh’ suspense. It really is about suspense, about what point you reveal [things], and you just don’t know until you’ve shot it.
“Chris mentioned about [it] feeling like theatre – it kind of did.”
The film, which also stars Laurence Fishburne and Sir Jonathan Pryce, explores ethical dilemmas and betrayal, alongside global espionage and a hunt for the truth – between two people who happen to be experts in secret-keeping.
So much of the tale and secret-revealing is in the subtleties – particular in the scenes played out over the dinner. “It was really about the twitch of the eye, the little hand movement, or lean over the table,” says Metz.
For Pine, those scenes helped him bond with Newton. “We really connected on this movie. When you find yourself sitting across a dinner table from someone for eight weeks, and it’s just the two of you, you inevitably get to know them really well. So a great friendship developed between us.”
● All The Old Knives is out on Amazon Prime Video