Twists and Turns Abound in ‘All the Old Knives’
Starring Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Pryce
Rated R
Thriller
Run time: 1 hr, 41 min
Directed by Janus Metz
On Amazon Prime April 8, 2022
Amazon Prime’s All the Old Knives is a land of blue eyes and red herrings. And for a thriller starring Chris Pine, I’m not sure I’d want anything other than that. Add in the fact that I didn’t have to pay anything additional in order to watch it from my couch, and this film is a solid win. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it has a top notch cast that keeps you guessing from beginning to end. Every time I thought I understood exactly where it was going and what was going on, it’s as if they heard me and decided to make an about face and fake me out in a different direction. Where that would normally seem gimmicky, the frame story element helps wind through it in a way that is almost entrancing.
Pine and Thandiwe Newton play ex-colleagues and romantic partners who are meeting up to rehash a stand-out event in their careers within the CIA that is coming back to the forefront of minds as being a bid shady. There was a failed rescue from a hijacked plane that had a tragic outcome and something just wasn’t adding up. The audience winds through each of their recollections, along with that of Jonathan Pryce’s character, through conversations about that horrible period eight years prior. We’re only fed a little bit of information at a time and there are so many details that put a unique spin on the tale that makes us completely reassess what we have guessed would have happened.
As I have said in many a review, one of the best things about this movie is its run time. I don’t know how this almost always seems to be the case, but when a film is under two hours, it does make a lot of solid choices in what they think we need to know. I didn’t come out of this viewing wishing they’d covered something other than what they did, and I was only confused by one single thing that was due to me missing a title card. When it’s a combination of memories and a mystery, that is a sign of a well-crafted thriller. They also do a wonderful job of making it obvious when it’s a flashback. They don’t just change up Newton’s style and hair, but Pine’s as well. Which helps since Pryce and Fishburne have looked the same for roughly 25 years and it would have been some terrifying, Irishman style de-aging to convey that through them.
There is nothing I can actively complain about, so it’s hard to explain why it is only getting a 65% for me, but it was lacking. With so many thrillers in the age of post-Gone Girl, it takes so much more to stand out than it did prior. We’ve seen all the tropes. And while this movie’s finale didn’t make me roll my eyes, it also didn’t make me gasp or clutch my pearls. Considering this is an easily-streamed, current film, it’s absolutely worth checking out but it isn’t one you need to drop everything and watch. However, if, like me, you are enamored not only with Pine but also Newton, it is a wonderful way to spend roughly 100 minutes (and try to predict the ending, of course).