Movie Review: All the Old Knives (Amazon – 2022)

 

This movie focuses on a CIA investigation into a failed intelligence operation that takes place in Vienna, Austria eight years earlier. The movie is set in 2020, with the botched operation in 2012. The film uses flashbacks mixed in with the contemporary story, and with a few exceptions, flows well.

 

The movie is inspired by actual events. Any of us who have been subjected to either Department of Defense or Central Intelligence Agency internal investigations of botched intelligence operations – I have been subjected to both – will easily identify with the “witch hunt” mentality present in the movie.

 

As always, I will try not to reveal things that will spoil your enjoyment of the film, which actually requires very little suspension of disbelief. The events depicted in the movie actually happened (for the most part).

 

Most of the action takes place in city of Vienna, particularly at the CIA station in the U.S. Embassy there. I have spent a lot of time in Vienna (wife’s family), and for the most part, the scenes matched the script, with one glaring exception – the Gloriette was badly mismatched.

 

The other venue in the movie, which was beautifully videographed, is the Monterey Peninsula - specifically Carmel-by-the-Sea and Pacific Grove, as well as the stunning vistas of California Highway 1 along the Monterey County coast. To those of us who spent time learning foreign languages at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, it was a trip down memory lane. My wife and I liked it so much, we were married there, and vacation there to this day.

 

The plot: A Turkish passenger jet is hijacked by Islamist terrorists at the airport in Vienna. The CIA station rallies to gather information on who perpetrated the crime, and any possible solutions.

 

Based on an interrogation, an Agency source, now dead – one assumes he died under “enhanced interrogation” (how inconvenient)– claimed that there was a leak (a “mole” in the parlance) from inside the Vienna station that led to the debacle that ensues. I am being vague here so as to not reveal too much.

 

Eight years later (now 2020), “Langley” – “Agency-speak” for CIA headquarters – wants to know what went wrong, or more correctly, if there was a leak at Vienna Station and who the mole was. One of the case officers from that botched operation – well-played by Chris Pine – is assigned to re-investigate the station’s actions and ultimately discover the mole.

 

Of course, there are the unnecessary gratuitous sex scenes and too many personal aspects to the story. Enjoy them – the actors are attractive – and the storylines are not that farfetched.

 

The plot line takes numerous twists and keeps you guessing until the end – well done. Enjoy trying to figure out who the mole was.

 

The four main characters were all played well:

·       Chris Pine as Henry Pelham

·       Thandiwe Newton as Celia Harrison

·       Laurence Fishburne as Vick Wallinger

·       Jonathan Pryce as Bill Compton

 

Bottom line: Enjoyable film - watch it, immerse yourself in the plot’s twists and turns, and put a bit of money on who you think it is.

 

You can watch it on Amazon.

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Footnote: I was involved in the National Security Agency coverage of the hijacking of a 1984 Kuwaiti Airways flight to Tehran, Iran, and listened live to the murder of an American diplomat. It still haunts me.

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