In “All The Old Knives” aka “The Call” Chris Pine doesn’t fight alongside Wonder Woman, but duels as a spy with an old flame. The brand new thriller is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video starting today.
“All The Old Knives” is based on the novel “The Call” by Olen Steinhauer, who adapted his book himself for the film adaptation. The focus is on a meeting in a suspiciously empty restaurant: Celia (Thandiwe Newton) and Henry (Chris Pine) not only once worked together but were also lovers. Now she has started a new life with a husband and children, but he is still working in his old job: as a CIA agent!
The food has a professional background: Years ago, a plane hijacking in Vienna got out of hand because someone at the CIA colluded with the terrorists. Henry now wants to find out if Celia is a traitor. A team stands ready to take them out directly if he can convict them. But Celia also has an agenda. A game of cat and mouse begins…
Even before the novel was published, plans for a film adaptation began in Hollywood in 2014. The project, which was originally tackled by director Neil Burger (“Ohne Limit”) with Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, changed the personnel in front of and behind the camera several times. In the end, “Borg/McEnroe” director Janus Metz Pedersen staged a duo of “Star Trek” stars Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”).
“All The Old Knives”: The end is strong, the path to it is not
Even if the chemistry between this duo is right, the duel is rather boring for long stretches. We were able to preview “All The Old Knives”. Although the ending is very strong and deeply tragic, the path to it, unfortunately, doesn’t convince us.
In the DashFUN review, we point out, among other things, that Metz Pedersen doesn’t manage to start the actual psychological duel in the restaurant until shortly before the end. Because he focuses too much on flashbacks, which are rather generic and spread false leads that have no effect.
