All the Old Knives (2022)
Directed by Janus Metz
No — All the Old Knives is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
All the Old Knives is a spy thriller that spends most of its running time at a dinner table.
Consciousness Markers
Thandiwe Newton is a Black female co-lead and the cast includes Middle Eastern and South Asian actors (Ahd Kamel, Nasser Memarzia), but the diversity is natural to a globe-trotting spy thriller rather than a statement.
Celia is a competent, central operative who outmaneuvers the men around her, but the film makes no argument about gender and treats her as an individual rather than a thesis.
A dialogue-driven thriller that unfolds its mystery through conversation rather than moral instruction; there is no preaching to the audience.
No LGBTQ+ characters or themes appear; the espionage plot is entirely heterosexual in its central romance.
Race is never a subject of the film; the terrorism plot concerns Islamist militants but is framed as geopolitics, not racial commentary.
No environmental or climate content whatsoever.
The CIA and intelligence apparatus are portrayed as morally compromised, but the critique is about betrayal and tradecraft, not capitalism or class.
No body image or body positivity themes present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
A fictional spy story with no historical revisionism; the 2012 hijacking is invented for the plot.
Why it received this score
All the Old Knives is a spy thriller that spends most of its running time at a dinner table. Henry Pelham, a CIA officer played by Chris Pine, is dispatched to Carmel-by-the-Sea to interrogate a former colleague and former lover, Celia Harrison, played by Thandiwe Newton, about a 2012 hijacking that ended with sarin gas and more than a hundred dead. The restaurant is nearly empty. The wine is poisoned. Conversation does the work that explosions usually do, and the film trusts its two leads to hold the frame. They mostly do.
The picture carries a modest representational footprint without making a production of it. Newton, a Black woman, occupies the co-lead and gives the more interesting performance, and the supporting cast includes Ahd Kamel and Nasser Memarzia in roles the plot requires. None of this is announced or underlined. Celia is a capable operative who reads the room, spots the discrepancies in a dead man's messages, and administers a quiet revenge, and the film lets her be an individual with a grudge instead of a case study. There is no sermon here. The screenplay unfolds its mystery through tradecraft and recrimination, and it never turns to address the audience.
What the film declines to do is equally notable. Race is not a subject. Neither is class, ecology, body image, nor neurological difference. The CIA is portrayed as an institution of betrayals, but the indictment stays personal and never turns structural. What remains is an old-fashioned story of love, guilt, and a man drinking wine he should not have. It is competent, melancholy, and entirely free of instruction. The old knives, it turns out, are the ones we keep for each other.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When the CIA discovers one of its agents leaked information that cost more than 100 people their lives, veteran operative Henry Pelham is assigned to root out the mole with his former lover and colleague Celia Harrison.
Questions about All the Old Knives
Is All the Old Knives woke?
No — All the Old Knives is not woke, scoring 10 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does All the Old Knives have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (42). On Representation Casting: Thandiwe Newton is a Black female co-lead and the cast includes Middle Eastern and South Asian actors (Ahd Kamel, Nasser Memarzia), but the diversity is natural to a globe-trotting spy thriller rather than a statement.
How does All the Old Knives compare to other 2022 movies?
It ranks #155 of the 223 films from 2022 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Bros (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.