All The Old Knives | Film Review

 

I'm a huge Chris Pine fan, so this film had been on my radar for a while. And while I was looking forward to seeing it, I knew that it possibly wouldn't be something I'd love depending on whether it focused on the spy story or the love story.

When the CIA discovers a mole within the organisation, Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) is forced to reunite with his former colleague and lover, Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton) to discover the truth.

I didn't love the film for various reasons, most of which I'd been expecting.

For a start, the film begins at a running pace. It took literally 3 minutes for the entirety of the story to be explained to the audience. There was absolutely no time to sit with these characters, get to know them, or actually like them.

The film never really did anything to make the audience care about either the incident (a plane hijacking) or the mole.

A lot of this movie rests on the chemistry of its main characters, and for me the characters (or perhaps the actors) didn't have enough chemistry to make their relationship interesting. However, I would have liked the film to focus more on building this relationship and making it believable, than on the spy story that I never cared about.

Despite the running pace that the film starts with, from here it moves really slowly, and isn't a particularly thrilling thriller. It takes a long time to tell this story and it really doesn't need to.

There were some interesting twists, but not enough to make the film interesting in and of itself.

Overall, I didn't care about the story or its characters, and as spy thrillers go, there are definitely better ones out there. This isn't a film that I can see myself re-watching.

3/10