Olen Steinhauer’s All the Old Knives is a tale of terrorism and treason, but most of all, it’s about a tête-à-tête. The offbeat thriller, which received a Kirkus star when it was published in 2015, takes place mainly over the course of a single meal, as two characters reminisce over glasses of wine at an eatery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. It’s not a James Bond– or Jason Bourne–style spy adventure; it takes its cues from John Le Carré, with a quieter plot of secrets and lies. Now it’s the basis for a new film, scripted by Steinhauer and starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine and Westworld’s Thandiwe Newton, which premieres in theaters and on Amazon Prime Video on April 8.

In the novel, CIA operative Henry Pelham is charged with looking into a horrific act of terrorism five years earlier. Members of an extremist group called Aslim Taslam hijacked a plane on the tarmac at a Viennese airport, threatening to kill all 127 people onboard, including several children, if certain prisoners weren’t released. One of the plane’s passengers turned out to be a CIA courier. The situation ended badly, and now Henry is interviewing former colleagues at the agency’s Vienna station as part of an internal CIA investigation—a hunt for a traitor in the agency’s ranks. One of those colleagues is his ex-lover, Celia Favreau, who’s now married with children and long retired from agency business. As the pair converse over a luxurious dinner, it becomes clear that they both harbor dangerous secrets. “It’s an understatement to say that nothing is as it seems,” Kirkus’ reviewer noted, “but even readers well-versed in espionage fiction will be pleasantly surprised by Steinhauer's plot twists and double backs.”

The novel is narrated from the alternating perspectives of Henry and Celia, who reveal their thoughts about the restaurant conversation. They also revisit, through flashbacks, the day of the terrorist incident, as analysts in the Vienna station desperately searched for a way to save the airline passengers. Along the way, the story delves into Henry and Celia’s fraught romantic relationship, which connects to the espionage plot in intriguing ways. (Tape transcripts and emails are interspersed throughout the narrative as well.) A major, unexpected plot turn toward the end will make readers want to reread the book to see how deftly Steinhauer laid the groundwork for it, and the ending surprises by leaving the fate of one major character in doubt. It’s a clever puzzle-box of a novel—and one that would pose a challenge to any filmmaker to adapt for the screen.

Janus Metz, the director of this adaptation, is best known for helming the 2010 war documentary Armadillo and the 2017 sports drama Borg vs. McEnroe—neither of which appear to have been adequate training for a complicated spy thriller, told from multiple perspectives and taking place in multiple eras. His film feels like a knotty tangle of plot points, whereas the novel is always crystal-clear, laying out the details with brisk economy. One key plot point, involving who dialed a certain number from a certain phone, has momentous stakes in the book, but it simply doesn’t feel as important in the film—despite the use of an obtrusive, excessively dramatic score by composers Jon Ekstard and Rebekka Karijord, which runs roughshod over some tense scenes. The CIA courier’s story, too, could have yielded some suspenseful moments, but the director simply doesn’t exploit the opportunity. Eventually, some viewers will cease to care, because the director hasn’t made clear what they should care about. Still, the film isn’t a complete wash; Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s cinematography is gorgeous, with a vividness and warmth that one rarely sees in spy dramas, and the film’s final few minutes, after all secrets are revealed, are truly engaging and offer resolution on one point left vague in the novel.

One can’t fault the film’s stars, in any case. Pine and Newton both deliver passionate performances that are worthy of Steinhauer’s complex characters; they feel like real people—not the cold, cynical types often found in espionage tales. One only wishes that both actors were in a production that was worthy of them. It’s too bad that the excellent, underseen Epix spy series Berlin Station, which Steinhauer created in 2016, is now off the air; Pine and Newton would have fit right in.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.