All the Old Knives ending explained: Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton's new spy thriller unravelled
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Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton's spy thriller All the Old Knives is now out on Amazon Prime Video. The film, based on the novel of the same name, follows Henry Pelham (Pine) as he tries to uncover which CIA mole potentially leaked information that cost more than 100 people their lives.
When he is tasked with interrogating his former lover and colleague Celia Harrison (Newton), however, things begin to unravel. As we dissect the ins and outs of what went down, there will be All the Old Knives spoilers!
The movie is told in two timelines. The first is the timeline in which the hijacking of Flight 127 in Austria takes place, following our cast of characters' actions during that time. The second is eight years later; Henry is tasked by Vick (Laurence Fishburne) with uncovering the mole, and he talks to two others: Celia and Bill (Jonathan Pryce).
We begin with both timelines almost simultaneously – our first scene is of the CIA field office in Vienna getting news that every hostage on-board Flight 127 has been killed. Celia runs from the office, Henry chasing after her and calling her name.
Eight years later, Henry tracks Celia – now married with kids – down in California and they agree to meet, where Henry reveals that they discovered there was a mole at the time and it's his job to uncover said mole. Celia, obviously, assumes Henry thinks she could be a suspect, and the 'interrogation' begins with Henry asking Celia to go over everything that happened eight years prior.
Celia's narration brings us to the past, helpfully introducing the rest of the team to the audience. So that's Jonjo O'Neill as Austrian liaison Ernst Pul, Ahd as fellow agent Leila Maloof, and David Dawson as tech specialist Owen Lassiter.
Bill is her boss and a sort of father figure, with Vick at the head of the team, liaising directly with the US government, and of course, there's Henry – whose previous work in Moscow, in which the Russians killed not only a group of terrorists but civilians in the process, still haunts him.
The plane was hijacked upon landing in Vienna, a move the team thinks is to force Germany to release its own prisoners. While trying to gain more information, a message arrives from an asset who happens to be a passenger on board the plane, giving them details: they can attack through the undercarriage of the aircraft.
No-one can get any information about the hijackers. Celia leaves to contact a source, who leads her to a man who says he has information but, in the end, doesn't seem to have anything of value. In the 'present day' Henry also visits Bill, threatening him to turn on who Henry suspects is the mole: Celia.
Henry reveals that he knows Celia looked at the phone logs and recognised that a Vienna field-office extension called numbers with Iranian extensions, where the hijackers are from – and the extension was for Bill's office phone. Bill denies his involvement, but also refuses to name Celia.
At the restaurant, Celia says she didn't tell anyone about her suspicions over the phone number, but later she was approached by a man named Karl (Corey Johnson), who told her for a fact Bill had been trading intelligence to the highest bidder, which Celia says left her distraught. Back in the past, they receive another message from their asset on board, who now says that the hijackers in fact have a camera on the undercarriage, and he tells them to abort their mission.
Celia, however, notices discrepancies in the messages from their asset: his first two are in short sentences with contractions, whereas his third uses longer sentences and no contractions, leading her to believe that the third message came from the hijacker. Her suspicion is confirmed when, later, the plane door opens and their asset is shot in the head and dumped onto the tarmac.
The group soon discover that one man involved is Ilyas Shushani (Orli Shuka), a former asset of Henry's who Henry was forced to sell out to the Russians, in exchange for information from the Russians about a potential attack on the US. It was this exchange that led to the death of the civilians in Moscow and, later, to the death of Ilyas' daughter and wife. Henry, however, doesn't see Ilyas as someone who would be radicalised.
In the restaurant, their server spills some wine, seeming distraught, and then is replaced. Henry asks after their original server, and their new one says that she was fine, just having a bout of sickness due to her pregnancy, and he's going to be taking care of them. Henry seemingly accepts the explanation, but after drinking his wine he begins to feel ill.
He goes to the bathroom and is approached by a contractor named Treble (Michael Shaeffer), who says he's there to take Celia out at Henry's word. Henry returns to the table and confronts Celia more firmly, saying the one thing he never understood is why after their asset was killed, she came over, they had sex, and then she vanished from his life altogether.
Celia reveals that after their asset was killed, she went back to Henry's place and while he was showering, she heard his phone vibrate and saw that an Iranian phone number was calling. She put the pieces together and knew it was in fact Henry who had given up their asset. When everyone aboard the flight was killed, she tried to rationalise it and decided to make as clean a break as she could. Henry continues to feel woozy and suddenly has a nosebleed.
We then see Celia, in a scene from the not-too-distant past, being approached by Karl again, but this time he instructs her to entrap Henry at a restaurant where they have set everything up – staff and other patrons included. She says she will if afterwards, they leave her and her family alone for good.
Back in the restaurant, she tells Henry that they are going to make his death look like suicide, and asks Henry why he betrayed them. Henry reveals he did it for Celia.
We then go back to the past where, while Celia is out meeting her contact, Henry goes to the location his contact had texted and there finds Ilyas. Ilyas reveals that he has orchestrated Celia's meet, and that if Henry doesn't give him some information he will have her killed, explaining that this is revenge for Henry giving him up. In the aftermath of being tortured by the Russians, he and his family fled to Iran where his daughter died, because they couldn't get medicine for her thanks to US sanctions.
Distraught, Henry reveals both the plan to attack the plane from the undercarriage and the identity of their asset on board, thus saving Celia's life. At the table, a dying Henry tells her he loves her and demands Celia leave the restaurant, which she does.
Treble calls to ask Henry's permission to kill her – but Henry dies before giving the order. Meanwhile, Bill calls Vick who is in Henry's apartment, cleaning it out, to tell him their mission has been accomplished. Celia goes home and, we guess, lives happily ever after.
All the Old Knives, based on the book of the same name, is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.
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