All the Old Knives Review

This is a role that feels uniquely suited to Chris Pine.

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In that sense, this is a role that feels uniquely suited to Pine, benefiting greatly from the almost-decade of fermenting since his Jack Ryan escapade. He conveys both cold calculation and raw turmoil via his eyes (helped immensely by those aforementioned closeups). The actor’s chemistry with Newton is tangible, not merely in their love scenes (of which there are a few), but in the longing and distance they convey as the details of the plot are methodically unfurled, each cross-cut from past to present illuminating more details in an extremely complicated patchwork of fateful events.

As to that plot (with screenplay by Steinhauer himself), I’m not entirely sure how well it all holds together after a few hours to actually take stock of it, but certainly in the moment, there are enough twists and turns to justify the investment. While there’s the uncomfortable matter of this being yet another Hollywood film trotting out horary stereotypes of barbaric Arab terrorists, there’s at least an attempt to showcase more complexity to these matters than a lot of the “They hate us because of our freedom” discourse in the aftermath of 9/11.

There’s an air of melancholy methodically woven into All the Old Knives. Far from feeling heroic or noble, it’s the sense that this line of work –– necessary though it often is –– has somewhat broken all the people tasked with executing it. Not just Pelham and Harrison, but also Wallinger and his second-in-command Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce). It’s about death and betrayal and tragedy, but mostly it’s about sadness. Incurable sadness.