In All The Old Knives, Chris Pine’s spy lacks Jack Ryan’s edge
Amazon Prime's geopolitical thriller can't match Tom Clancy's franchise, despite a sexual charge from the pairing of Pine and Thandiwe Newton
Film Reviews Jack Ryan
Chris Pine’s career as Jack Ryan came to an abrupt end after one movie, but much like George Lazenby and James Bond, that might just make him the perfect guy to play knock-offs of other iconic heroes. In All The Old Knives, Pine enters the film sporting perfect hair, an absurdly fashion-forward scarf and a dead-eyed stare, a look that’s more Derek Zoolander than Tom Clancy’s rugged, quick-thinking analyst. But director Janus Metz Pederson wastes little time on the spy world’s Blue Steel before tapping the less superficial qualities that Pine brought to Ryan and James Kirk, even if his role here feels more like a copycat of his better ones.
Most movies set in the “present” use their expected release date as the timeframe. This one’s explicitly set in 2020, its year of production, but it also includes frequent flashbacks to 2012, indicated by conspicuous pictures of Barack Obama on the walls of the CIA offices. In that 2012 “reality” a major Austrian plane hijacking ended with the deaths of everyone on board, and eight years later the case is reopened. Pine’s Henry Pelham is assigned by director Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne) to figure out why it wasn’t solved the first time.
While there’s a possibility of a mole, the stronger likelihood is that Henry’s former coworker and lover Celia (Thandiwe Newton), or at least someone she knows, was the culprit. At a perfect golden-hour dinner meeting in Carmel, a conversation between the two, along with a series of flashbacks, starts to piece together what actually happened. Henry has stationed a hitman outside waiting to take Celia out if doesn’t like what he hears, but Celia, despite her retirement, is smart enough to come prepared with her own back-up.
It seems fitting that Amazon initially became a retail giant based on book sales, and as a studio now cranks out the cinematic equivalent of airport impulse-buy thrillers. A decade or more ago, an adaptation of Olen Steinhauser’s novel All The Old Knives might easily have competed with big-screen versions of John Grisham and Scott Turow bestsellers, but audiences no longer want to pay upwards of $20 per ticket for them—at least not in theaters. Streaming services stepped in to fill the gap, along with companies like Potboiler Productions, whose name couldn’t be more appropriate for developing films like this.
In addition to their intellectual tete-a-tete, Pine and Newton engage in a bedroom showdown as well, a welcome rejoinder to social media grousing about a lack of love scenes in contemporary movies. Then again, the movie is mostly set in 2020, so perhaps it’s included more as an act of nostalgia. Nevertheless, from its celebrity butt shots to Jonathan Pryce’s American accent, All The Old Knives is compelling moment by moment, but afterward viewers may have some lingering questions about what characters hoped to accomplish, or why they were involved at all. Pine and Newton command the audience’s attention, but as CIA analysts they both seem to miss details that would be important for their jobs—though to be fair, it’s easy to get distracted by their mutual hotness.
For better or worse, the film names both Islamic terrorists and (indirectly) Vladimir Putin as the world’s bad guys, and underscores the trouble that ensues when other world powers try to take sides. Nevertheless, All The Old Knives offers enough of a clearinghouse for well-known villains (here come the Chechens!) that it’s likely to feel more like a fun time waster than a measured referendum on geopolitics. Critics inclined to get angry that it takes the CIA mostly for granted might have a point, but this film is also unlikely to stir deeper cultural debate than what to watch on a Friday night after Mom and Dad have put the kids to bed and poured a few glasses of wine. Not to mention, it’s clearly told from the CIA’s point of view, regardless of which character the viewer sides with in the end.
While it’s unlikely that Pine has found himself a new franchise here, the actor’s ability to exude bravado and then to undercut it with vulnerability makes him the perfect casting choice for more not-Jack Ryan projects like this. Maybe he can do it in the next Expendables.
34 Comments
Less edge than Jack Ryan? He’s a marshmallow?
Nothing to add but that I though this was the knives out sequel.
🙁
So basically actual spying without all the over the top, unbelievable action sequences. Not every movie needs gore and shock to convince.
If you like that you should definitely be watching Slow Horses on AppleTV—that show is fantastic, and it’s as ‘slow British spy thriller’ as they come.
In the picture just beneath the headline, Pine looks like Tom Cruise in Collateral.
As if AV Club would give good reviews to anything Tom Clancy wrote these days.
Probably because Clancy was a hack who gave surface-to-air missiles more character development than any of his actual characters.
If Tom Clancy wrote a book today, I think everyone would be blown away by it. Mostly because he’s been dead for almost a decade
Oh, he’s still writing, Nilus!It’s just ghostwriting now….
I think Dean Koontz died in 2007 and that hasn’t slowed him down a bit. See you after you do the Google search…
restore the clancy’verse
As if Tom Clancy wrote anything decent. The only good movie based on his work was Hunt for Red October.
Cardinal of the Kremlin was also pretty decent, but after the Cold War ended he (like most writers of spy thrillers) floundered. Without a Big Bad like the USSR to pit his hero against, Jack Ryan’s subsequent adventures took him out of the realm of Secret Agents Who Do Extraordinary Things We Never Hear About to a Big Damn Hero on the World Stage, so he turned into the Mary Sue to end all Mary Sues (more than once I’ve said the male version of the Mary Sue trope should be named “Jack Ryan”).He was also one of the first thriller writers to openly hero-worship Putin, a stance that’s aged like milk.
“ so he turned into the Mary Sue to end all Mary Sues (more than once I’ve said the male version of the Mary Sue trope should be named “Jack Ryan”).”Like becoming president in Executive Decisions which was basically the literary equivalent of “Gabriel Over the White House”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Over_the_White_House
I think Clancy would easily have made China the Big Bad Villain, you know, like in the real world, now.I remember Arthur C Clarke would write the Chinese into his later sci-fi novels, and in reality, China does NOT play nice with other countries when it comes to space exploration. BTW, Star Trek does that too these days, but it’s probably because the Chinese so-called movie studios do finance a lot of Paramount productions.
When did Chris Pine play Jack Ryan?I remember Baldwin, Ford, Affleck(!), Jim from The Office… but not Pine.
I vaguely remember some Jack Ryan movie in Russia with Pine and Keira Knightly as his wife.
Yeah, after IMDb’ing Pine, I found Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit from 2014. I don’t remember that one at all.
No one does it’s okay
I saw it and it’s entirely forgettable (I can only tell you that I’ve seen it, but nothing specific about it)…so, yeah. Understandable that you wouldn’t remember that movie even existing.
Ha! I had to read the plot twice to even get a vague idea that I saw it. It’s honestly a little weird how forgettable that movie was.This movie, on the other hand, is pretty decent, if also forgettable.
it was a middling flop where kenneth branaugh (who also directed) got to trial run his tenet villain character.
It was an original story set in Clancy’s Jack Ryan universe — Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit as Soylent Green said.It’s also a movie which, far as I can tell, does not exist despite starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Sir Chuckles Branagh playing yet another Bogus Roos-ian!, and Kira Knightley as Jack’s girlfriend Cathy. (Did they retcon Cathy so she’s British now, or did the Veddy English Rose Knightley attempt a ‘Murikan accent?) I vaguely remember seeing some trailers for it which did nothing for me as I so did not like Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk and never understood the appeal of Kevin Costner, and while I generally like Kenneth Branagh his Russian characters would be right at home alongside Boris and Natasha!So…has anybody seen it? Is it worth keeping my Paramount+ subscription to take a look at…?
Okay so I know Pine gets put up as the best Chris in Hollywood and that may be correct. But with that beard I think we can agree he is the hottest Chris in Hollywood right?
None can beat Hemsworth.
I think we need to see Chris Pine shirtless…For Science!!
There are several sex scenes in this movie. In the dark, but still, worth your time.
he’s been getting insane fits off in his private life, too.
Amazed to find that she’s eight years older than him but playing his love interest, not his mother.
The book is a soapy little potboiler / page turner. Why is the hero of a tech porn thriller series being referenced? We all know who not quite the best Chris Pine is.
It looks like the woman version of My Dinner with Andre.
Boogaloo knives.
This movie had a fair amount of sex between the leads. Kinda odd considering the plot, but if that was Newton without a body double, then, wow, hot! She is 49.
For better or worse, the film names both Islamic terrorists and
(indirectly) Vladimir Putin as the world’s bad guys, and underscores
the trouble that ensues when other world powers try to take sides.
Nevertheless, All The Old Knives offers enough of a
clearinghouse for well-known villains (here come the Chechens!) that
it’s likely to feel more like a fun time waster than a measured
referendum on geopolitics.
This is such an odd take, considering—spoiler alert—the movie pretty explicitly points out that the Chechen Islamic terrorists were radicalized by torture at the hands of the Russian government and betrayal by the American government.