Spy thriller ‘All the Old Knives’ complicated, with an OK twist
BASED purely on anecdotal evidence, the spy thriller ‘All the Old Knives’ is going to be a talker. More specifically – if the three conversations I overheard on the way back to the subway from a recent screening are any indication – many of those conversations are going to begin with, “What the flip just happened?”
That’s not necessarily because it’s confusing. But it is complicated.
Based on Olen Steinhauer’s 2015 novel, the film unspools mostly over the course of a long conversation in a pretty (and pretty empty) wine bar in Carmel-by-the-Sea, with the sun setting gorgeously, from late afternoon to evening, over the Pacific in the background. In the foreground: CIA operative Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) and his former colleague – and former lover – Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton). So you know the scenery up close is easy on the eyes, too.
What they’re talking about is a bit more taxing on the brain. Eight years before the conversation in question, when Henry and Celia were both stationed in Vienna, a Turkish passenger plane was hijacked, with the bad guys – some combination of Chechens and Somalis – holding the passengers hostage in that city’s airport. Their demands: the release of prisoners from Germany. Somehow, a Russianspeaking Chechen (Orli Shuka), now based in Tehran but once Henry’s contact in Moscow, is also involved. And I haven’t even gotten to the complicated part yet.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s call all that, as they do in the flashback-laden film, Flight 127. Flight 127 didn’t end well; it has subsequently been revealed that there may have been a mole in the CIA’s Vienna station during the tense standoff. The station chief, Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne), has dispatched Henry to California wine country, where Celia is now married with two kids, to interrogate her as a suspect over rosè, free-range artisanal bacon and pumpkin puree.
Depending on the outcome of this interview, an assassin is standing by to execute Celia – because, as Vick puts it, the agency can’t afford the bad publicity of a trial. And if you believe that bosh, you’ll have no trouble accepting the hot sex scene between Henry and Celia, which takes place, also in flashback, smack dab in the middle of l’Affaire Flight 127. The sex isn’t entirely gratuitous, but it is essential for a particular plot twist – and there are more than one or two of them – to even make sense. — The Washington Post