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.
