In “All the Old Knives,” ex-lovers and spies Henry and Celia meet for dinner in an upscale California beach town. They reminisce, haltingly, but this is no ordinary get-together. Celia (Thandiwe Newton) left the job years ago and shed her ties to the CIA in favor of marriage and children; Henry (Chris Pine) is still on the job and he’s been tasked with investigating a deadly airline hijacking from nearly a decade back, when they were both based out of Vienna. Turns out, there was a leak that sabotaged their efforts for a better outcome. Over sips of wine, fine dining and subtle mutual interrogation, this reunion is meant to shed light on the mole’s identity. Who double-crossed whom?
Except for the fact that Henry’s casework centers on a plane besieged by terrorism, “All the Old Knives” feels designed to be watched on a plane. That’s not a dig; beach reads and in-flight movies are meant to be diverting, but not too taxing. Yet even by those standards, the film is listless.
The story is based on the short novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer, who was inspired by the meal-between-exes premise of a 2010 two-hander that aired on PBS called “The Song of Lunch,” starring Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, who catch up years later to break bread and nurse their boozy recriminations. The intimacy’s the thing and the film spotlights a pair of actors who find disarming humor even in a dramatic setting that is both intoxicating and sometimes bordering on too much information. Steinhauer saw something there he could play with, added an espionage angle and was off to the races.
Celia has left her old life of intrigue for something more suburban and cozy in the quietly exquisite environs of Carmel-by-the-Sea, which the book describes as the kind of place “in which Miss Marple might find herself stumbling around, discovering corpses among antiques,” but what might have had some wit on the page becomes sodden and plodding in this screen adaptation from Steinhauer and director Janus Metz. There’s a glimmer of something sardonic when Henry first arrives at the restaurant, orders a James Bondian vodka martini and gives a barely exasperated look when he’s informed, “Sorry, we only serve wine.” He tells the barman: “Let’s try something cold.” White or rose? “Dry,” he replies ... dryly. Enjoy the moment, because the film abandons any opportunities for minor levity from that point forward.
Laurence Fishburne (as Henry’s current boss) and Jonathan Pryce (as Celia’s former boss) make brief appearances. Events from the day of the hijacking arrive in flashback, taking us away from the restaurant — a lovely space that is empty of people and visual interest — but the change of scenery doesn’t enliven things between Pine and Newton, who are left to do little more than inject some intensity into these underdeveloped characters. There’s a self-seriousness in the way they’ve been directed (they bring a more methodical energy to the table than Thompson and Rickman did in “A Song for Lunch”) that tends to suck all the tension from their spy vs. spy do-si-do. Scenes of the couple naked in bed back in Vienna lack eroticism and fail to convey anything meaningful about their head space in those moments.
And then there’s decision to make the hijackers Muslim, a tired, reductive narrative go-to the script does nothing to deepen or complicate. “All the Old Knives” settles for all the old tropes.
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'ALL THE OLD KNIVES'
1.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for sexuality/nudity, violence and language)
Running time: 1:41
Where to watch: In theaters and streaming on Amazon Prime Video
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