MovieChat Forums > All the Old Knives (2022) Discussion > Questions - caution, spoilers

Questions - caution, spoilers

posted 2 years ago by sharonben (1)
17 replies | jump to latest

Several questions related to the killer that Henry has on standby.
1) If the restaurant was staged with staff and patrons, then that means they knew who the hired killer was who came in. Why wouldn't they have made arrangements to protect Celia or to tell the killer that his 'contract' was cancelled. Why would they risk the killer calling Henry to get the go ahead.
2) In the bathroom at the restaurant the killer leaves a wet handprint on Henry's shoulder. Why?
3) If the staff was staged, what was the scoop with the waitress who spilled something and was replaced?
4) If Henry knew that he was going to have Celia killed (to cover up his own guilty act), why bother with all the questions about what happened (he knew he was guilty) and why didn't he tell the killer to just wait until later and do it then (ie, why did he have to give the go ahead)?

[–] Goliard (1413) 2 years ago

"1) If the restaurant was staged with staff and patrons, then that means they knew who the hired killer was who came in. Why wouldn't they have made arrangements to protect Celia or to tell the killer that his 'contract' was cancelled. Why would they risk the killer calling Henry to get the go ahead."
It's not entirely clear whether this was a cut-out who Henry employed, or if the arrangement came from above. If the latter, then this is (yet another) flaw in the movie. If the former, he could've just been a random customer.

"4) If Henry knew that he was going to have Celia killed (to cover up his own guilty act), why bother with all the questions about what happened (he knew he was guilty) and why didn't he tell the killer to just wait until later and do it then (ie, why did he have to give the go ahead)?"
Same as above. Although, as presented, I can't imagine Henry having her killed to cover up his transgressions.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

"If Henry knew that he was going to have Celia killed (to cover up his own guilty act)"

He was never going to have Celia killed. Wallinger had indicated that the mole was to be killed. Henry had to go through the motions of hiring a hit to make his investigation of Ce seem legit to Wallinger. He report would note that "Ce wasn't the mole" therefore no need for the hit on Ce.

If he hired no one, Wallinger would wonder if Henry had been honest in appraising Ce as the potential mole.

"If the restaurant was staged with staff and patrons, then that means they knew who the hired killer was who came in. "

No. Both Ce and Henry had separate assassins working for them. Neither team knew about the other. Ce's team assumed that Henry's man inside the restaurant was a random patron... no reason to think otherwise.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

If he was never going to kill Celia then he would never need to hire a hitman. His bosses would have always wanted plausible deniability so they would have never asked who he hired to kill her or wanted to know who the assassin was. They would have simply depended on him doing the job or hiring someone... but the real flaw is that they supposedly already knew he was the mole so wouldn't have asked him to kill her if she was guilty because if he was the mole and was asked with verifying that she was the mole he should have simply killed her and said she confessed. No wasted time, but her death would have given him closure on his own crime and that is what they would have expected of a mole, so why would they ask him to investigate her or anyone else if they already knew he was the bad guy. The whole contrived plot just didn't work.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

The ending is super complicated and I missed about ten minutes so my understanding might be off a bit.

Essentially two separate operations were in play by the CIA.

One was happening at Henry's end. Henry couldn't be sure that he himself wasn't being monitored by Wallinger. He has to assume that Wallinger has him (Henry) under surveillance as well. (Whether he ACTUALLY had him under surveillance is irrelevant to the larger plot.)

Therefore, in order to divert attention from himself, Henry still has to go through the motions of his operation just as if he wasn't the mole. He travels, interviews people, etc. It also means going through the motion of hiring someone to kill Ce. It's part of his act in case he is being watched.

However, he was never going to kill her. His submitted report would say simply that he found no reason to think that SHE was the mole. He already KNEW she wasn't the mole... he only wanted to meet her to find out why she left him.

The other operation was happening at Ce's end. They recruited her to establish the proof that Henry was the mole. Once they had confirmation at the restaurant he was eliminated.

The two operations were layered on top of each other.

The only thing I'm unsure about:

i. Did they suspect Henry only and set up this very Mission Impossible thing to trap him, i.e. they used Wallinger to feed a fake mission to Henry so they could draw a confession out of him at the restaurant? Note: Wallinger himself was unaware that he was part of a bigger operation.

or

ii. Did they suspect that it was EITHER Ce OR Henry and so set up the restaurant thing to watch how it would play out between them? There was evidence linking both of them to the terrorists. They were trying to establish which of them was the mole so set them in play against each other in the restaurant. Once they had confirmation of which one was the guilty one, they went ahead with the execution.

Both scenarios have flaws though so that's why I'm uncertain which is the more accurate.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

Except if they suspect either or both they would have taken them somewhere and waterboarded them to get the information asap before terminating the mole, assuming they were going to kill the mole. If they were going to kill the mole they would have just arrested them interrogated them and eventually gotten to the truth... The whole mission impossible bullshit setup was the ridiculous part. Was implausible that they would send one agent to setup an entire mission to interrogate and terminate a person on his own with no backup or surveillance when it was all being done in the US. It really just seemed like an entire scenario written by someone that not only had no experience in the area, bothered to understand the industry or even used logic.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

"Except if they suspect either or both they would have taken them somewhere and waterboarded them to get the information asap before terminating the mole"

No. Jeez! You think US intelligence services have unfettered permission to violate domestic constitutional laws and international laws to torture their OWN agents? They can't even do that to terrorists at Gitmo.

Take that to its logical conclusion... they could just haul away the entire Vienna station and torture the lot of them to get to the truth.

And trying to keep such a thing totally undiscovered from the media and families. Now THAT would be Mission Impossible.

"We don't torture foreign terrorists or even our own citizens, but we'll happily torture our own employees" is a terrible incentive for recruitment. You really want to put that part in the very very fine print of their contract.

"The whole mission impossible bullshit setup was the ridiculous part."

Yeah, that's how these spy/ legal movies and books work.

You never saw the MI movies, the James Bond movies, movies like Where Eagles Dare, The Departed, Three Days of the Condor etc. You never read a Tom Clancy novel?

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

You forget that in this movie the CIA has the authority to kill their own agents... that was the premise of the movie. So in a world where you can kill a your own agents you can surely torture them. I'm not saying in the real world you could torture your own agents, but I'm also sure that in the real world you wouldn't do elaborate mission impossible charades or sanction assassination of your own agents... My statement was based on the movie world that the writer is using. And if you can kill you could certainly torture.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

"You forget that in this movie the CIA has the authority to kill their own agents... that was the premise of the movie."

... AFTER investigating and confirming that they are the mole. Not before. At that point, the crime would be treason, one penalty for which is death.

In the real world torture has been shown to be ineffective in extracting information. I'll let you Google it.

But this is fiction, so let's stick with that. You take Ce and Henry into a room, torture them to figure who is the mole. What do you think is going to happen? Let's look at scenarios.

i. You start with Henry. He won't admit to being the mole. He knows that to admit guilt is a death sentence. So he holds out. Do you continue to torture him to the point of death? Or do you decide to start torturing the innocent Ce?

ii. You start with Ce. She won't admit to guilt because she really is innocent. Now you are back to scenario i. above.

iii. You start with Ce. After being tortured badly, she falsely admits to guilt because she can no longer stand the pain. She is executed. The real mole walks free.

iv. You start with Henry, he admits that he is the mole. He is executed. As the torturer how can you be sure that he didn't admit to the guilt to avoid prolonged torture, as per scenario iii.? Do you still torture Ce just to sure?

v. What if you take turns torturing each of them until you extract a confession from one? What are you going to do with the other one? You sure as hell can't let them go because they will go straight to outside authorities and the media and rain down a ton of sh*t on your organization (has happened). You would have to kill them too for good measure. In which case why bother with the whole torture thing in the first place?

Your torture idea won't work for reasons of logic.

You might not like the setup of the movie -- it is convoluted, but that is the nature of fictional spy movies.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

Torture works regardless of what snowflakes say. Now I'm not saying if I torture you to find out the secret you have that you will tell me the first time. That's not how effective torture works. I would torture you for days or weeks. Make note of everything you said, because when you lie it becomes very difficult to remember that lie later on when you are again being tortured. You just have to be willing to do extended torture and you can eventually find out what you want from someone simply because people aren't good liars and are even worse when you're stripping skin off their bodies or water boarding them.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

You've tortured people in your lifetime? How many?
How did that go? What was your very favourite technique?
Did you get the information you were seeking?

Never mind. As much as I would like to stick around in your bizarro world and hear your stories, I must get back to reality now.

Moving on...

[–] MovieKnut (184) 2 years ago

I would torture you for days or weeks.

Yeah...that's why torture is not an effective method of extracting information. Eventually you will agree to anything just to make it stop.

But hey, that's probably just the snowflake in me. Right?

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

There is a reason the Navy tells all the pilots that if they are capture they shouldn't feel bad when they break, and that they only tell the pilots information about their precise mission. The military knows torture works and that everyone has a breaking point.

[–] ATG6 (3000) 2 years ago

Obvously they can torture or kill their own agents. Henry even threatens Bill that he could have him tortured in Romania (it's only illegal in the USA).

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

But that is part of the sloppy bullshit writing. Torture is not nearly as bad as outright murder, but the writers have created a world where you can kill your own people in the US... Okay, if that is the world they have then logically you can also do anything short of killing your own people in the US as well, which would include torture. But they want to create an illogical world where you can't hit someone with a hammer in the US but you can kill them... that simply makes no sense and is more evidence of the writers just throwing shit to push the story where they wanted regardless of whether it made sense or not.

[–] Just3Channels (185) 2 years ago

I don't want to be called a lazy millennial but this movie was just too much effort. Maybe it was just me.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

I think most people were expecting an action oriented spy movie. It's really more a play... presented as a dialogue between two people.

By the time viewers realized the movie for what it was they probably had already missed vital clues that become important later in the movie. Trying to remember back to things which didn't seem important at the time would have been difficult.

[–] Just3Channels (185) 2 years ago

I guess so.
I know I missed vital clues.
I know this guy who loved it and keeps trying to get me to give it a second chance but I just dread going back though all.of it to the part where I stopped watching.