Fairly early on Chris Pine tries to order a vodka martini with Tito’s. Tito’s? Am I being trolled? This movie is ripe for parody, but it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to stay up long enough to satirize the second act, where there is an open competition to see who can double cross a double cross better. (Ultimately, if I’ve counted them correctly, it’s a double cross of a doubled cross caused by a third double cross and one of those double crosses is an innovation, a noble double cross.) Lawrence Fishburne is in this movie? I guess? In the same way that technically I’m sure at some point I’ve breathed the same puff of air as Lady Gaga? His essence is imprinted on this movie for long enough to distance himself from this set of flashbacks crafted into a story-shaped memory hole.
The most confusing part of the movie, though, is Chris Pine’s itinerary at the beginning of the film to California when he drives north from the Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, 18 miles south of Monterey (Big Little Lies country) to Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Thandiwe Newton has settled down. Anyone remotely familiar with the geography of Northern California knows that only the most deranged flight plan would place him in a fancy car 18 miles south of Monterey to meet this retired spy in Carmel. It’s so distracting, in fact, that you might miss Newton’s equally eye-popping reason for moving to one of the whitest, least hospitable cities in California (just ask Zoe Kravitz from BLL): “Good schools?” We are to believe that this spy has chosen the multiracial paradise of Carmel to lay low, something so suspicious as to raise alarm bells, actually. Almost as suspicious as the cover story that Chris Pine has suggested for why he could meet Newton in the first place: “I was in Santa Clara. I wanted to see you.” You were most certainly not in Santa Clara, Chris Pine. Lacking were the establishing shots of Pine struggling past speed traps galore on the 17, and that too gives us a sense that he is 1) a liar or 2) sorely confused about how to get to Carmel. Maybe he did actually fly into SJC and then overshot Carmel by half an hour and what we’re looking at in the beginning is Pine circling back, but then why is he early for the restaurant? Shouldn’t he be running late? Would that have meaningfully changed the mood of the movie? It certainly would’ve made it harder for him to try to order Tito’s vodka in a restaurant that only serves wine. You know, Tito’s. The vodka everyone’s drinking?
Newton has two children who take ballet. It makes no sense. Pine’s trip makes no sense. Newton’s cover story makes no sense. From the very moment he enters that empty restaurant, which is empty except for a bunch of shifty-eyed waiters, it looks like a fake meeting, which it is. Also holy shit what is an old knife and why do we have all of them?
