Way back in the day, as his TV series The Outer Limits was becoming too expensive, creator/producer Leslie Stevens coined the phrase “bottle show” for a budget-saving episode that minimized cast members, sets, shooting schedules and effects.
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| It begins as an intimate meal, but no: Celia (Thandiwe Newton) knows that she's actually being interrogated by former lover Henry (Chris Pine), regarding long-ago events that could leave her continued survival in doubt. |
Bottle shows subsequently became ubiquitous, with prominent — and often popular — examples on series as diverse as Star Trek, The X-Files, Friends, Mad About You, Breaking Bad and Grey’s Anatomy.
When the pandemic closed down conventional filmmaking for well over a year, innovative directors responded with the cinematic equivalent of bottle shows; examples have been trickling into theaters and streaming services during the past few months.
Some, like The Outfit, made ingenious use of such limitations.
All the Old Knives, sadly, succumbs to every possible pitfall awaiting such a shoot.
Olen Steinhauer’s 2015 novel may have been another popular entry in his oeuvre of best-selling espionage thrillers, but its adaptation here by director Janus Metz is the very definition of boring: slow, dull, overcooked and seemingly interminable. The “bottle” restraints are obvious: incessantly repeated flashbacks, relentlessly tight two-shots during sluggish exchanges between stars Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton, and ludicrously empty sets.
(A posh Carmel restaurant, with nobody else in it during an entire afternoon and evening? Puh-leaze.)
The story is pure John Le Carré territory: the eight-years-later search for a mole who compromised a critical operation in the CIA’s Austrian field office, with catastrophic results.
The year is 2020. Ilyas Shushani (Orli Shuka), a long-hunted terrorist, finally has been captured, and — just before he dies (we know not how or why, which seems odd) — he shares a juicy nugget of information that reaches the CIA’s Vienna section chief, Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne). He assigns veteran field agent Henry Pelham (Pine) to investigate all staff members who monitored a horrific attack on Flight 127, grounded by terrorists at the Vienna Airport back in January 2012, when everybody aboard ultimately was killed.
Although half a dozen people were intimately involved with the unfolding 24-hour crisis — including one who committed suicide just a few months later, which seems very suspicious — Henry focuses on only two (a decision undoubtedly prompted by bottle shoot limitations, rather than anything remotely approaching logic or common sense).
They are second-in-command Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), retired and living in London; and fellow operative Celia Harrison (Newton), retired and living in Carmel with her family.
And, small detail: Henry and Celia were lovers, back in 2012.
Which seems an insane breach of protocol, but — as Henry assures Wallinger — “I’ll know if she lies.”
Whatever.
Henry heads to Carmel — cue a token location shot, as he slowly drives along Ocean Avenue — for a prearranged meeting with Celia, at the aforementioned restaurant. Where he proceeds to grill her, during a meal that seems to last six hours, about every miniscule detail she can recall about those 24 hours.
Metz and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen repeatedly interrupt this crucial-yet-awkward reunion/interview/interrogation with an endless assortment of close-ups on food being served, and eaten; wine being poured, and slowly swallowed; napkins being pressed to lips. As the dinner progresses, details emerge — painfully slowly — about what went down that fateful day and night in Vienna.
Phone calls were made. (Any of them suspicious?) Constant computer activity. (Anything not monitored or logged?) Occasional absences by agents heading into the field, to liaise with informants who might shed light on the hijackers. (Who, precisely, did they talk to?)
When not overwhelming us with food porn, Metz similarly obsesses over Henry and Celia’s night of coïtus most passionatus, back in the day: again, an endless montage of writhing bodies, torrid kisses, nibbled ears and lovingly locked eyes. Many of these shots are repeated, two or three times, as the film progresses.
Okay, they adored each other. We get it.
That said, we eventually learn that this key bout of coupling took place when Henry and Celia left the Vienna station, in the middle of the hostage crisis, to … what? Recharge their batteries?
Class, can we spell unprofessional? Or incomprehensible? Or just plain weird?
I’ll give Steinhauer the benefit of the doubt, that he somehow made all of this nonsense more suspenseful and compelling in his novel. Alas, his script for this film compresses the saga so much, and Metz’s direction is so clumsy, that the mole’s identity is blindingly obvious, almost from the beginning.
Even so, some of the twisty details from Steinhauer’s plot clearly remain, with crucial bits concerning Ilyas Shushani cleverly revealed in the third act.
Newton deserves credit for holding this film together to any degree. Her guarded handling of Celia — blended with the feelings she still has toward Henry — is reasonably persuasive. Newton is flirty and wary by turns, her gaze wavering from inscrutable to transparent; we wholly sympathize with her.
Fishburne is equally credible as the perceptive, no-nonsense Wallinger, his steely gaze cutting right through anybody’s attempt to prevaricate. Alas, we don’t see much of him (again, likely due to bottle shoot restrictions).
Pine and Pryce overact atrociously. Although Pine handles the suave, probing dinner conversation somewhat effectively, he otherwise declaims in overly melodramatic Captain Kirk mode: hardly appropriate for this sort of material. Poor Pryce, given such a fleeting role, tries to compensate by being similarly overwrought. Doesn’t work.
The so-called score by Jon Ekstrand and Rebekka Karijord — all throbbing synth and long, low, bowed bass notes — quickly becomes monotonous.
This disappointing misfire is the very definition of tedious: absolutely not what one wants from an espionage thriller.
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