All the Old Knives review – generic spy thriller bolstered by great chemistry

In many ways, All the Old Knives is a refreshingly modest entry in what can often feel like an overblown genre of cinema. It's a spy thriller that lacks big action sequences (or even small ones), free from footchases and explosions, hinging instead on a fateful dinner between two former spies who haven't seen each another in almost a decade. More crucially, the pair were also once lovers.

Chris Pine is Henry Pelham, a CIA agent posted in Vienna who was once part of a team who failed to prevent a hijacking, leading to the deaths of 120 people. Eight years later, the case is reopened after his boss – played by Laurence Fishburne – informs him that there might have been a mole working on the inside. As the only member cleared of wrong-doing, Henry is tasked with interviewing his former colleagues, one of whom is his former lover, Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton), who quit in the wake of the incident and has started a new life in California.

In its lack of high-octane thrills, the plot unfolds not unlike something in the style of John le Carré, though in the hands of director Janus Metz Pedersen the shimmering visuals retain a crisp, commercial-like sheen that the British author's grey-coloured world of brow-beaten agents undone by their own institutions would never have allowed for. And I'm sure no Le Carré protagonist ever looked as handsome as Chris Pine.

The script – penned by the original novel's writer Olen Steinhauer – creates a nest of interwoven timelines that keep us guessing for at least a while, cutting back and forth between three distinct periods in order to continually reframe what we thought we knew. It never feels elegant, or perhaps even necessary, but it makes for mostly engaging viewing, though the ending reveal eventually telegraphs itself much too obviously.

Really, though, the plot mechanics plays second fiddle to the chemistry between Pine and Newton, and they absolutely sell us the confused feelings, the sense of betrayal, the pain that has never left them in the fallout of their romance through subtle line deliveries and nuanced glances across the table. The movie around them is ultimately pretty generic – but there is a real spark of sadness in these actors' eyes that just about convinces us this was a dinner worth attending.

All the Old Knives is now in UK cinemas and available to stream on Prime Video.