Warning! SPOILERS for All the Old Knives.
Laurence Fishburne stars in All the Old Knives as the head CIA operative, though his presence ends up being even more wasted than it was in The Matrix Resurrections. Following his acclaimed role in the original Matrix trilogy as Morpheus, Fishburne was recruited to star in numerous action and thriller movies, with All of the Old Knives being his latest spy venture. While the movie was inevitably promoted with Fishburne as an important figure, All the Old Knives ends up falling into a recent trap of teasing his role without any satisfying payoff.
The Matrix 4 brought back plenty of the original actors to reprise their roles as Neo, Trinity, and Niobe, with a few characters being portrayed by new actors. While Laurence Fishburne’s iconic Morpheus and Hugo Weaving’s acclaimed Agent Smith were played by new actors, the original actors’ history in the roles was still teased to have an important impact on The Matrix Resurrections’ plot. As an operative-like film that brought Fishburne to action hero prominence, it was disappointing to see that the actor’s only presence in The Matrix 4 was through archived footage and a statue of his likeness.
Since Fishburne’s lack of a role in The Matrix 4 left audiences without a significant action-packed performance by the actor in late 2021, All the Old Knives presented an opportunity to bring him back with a Morpheus-like quality in a CIA thriller. However, as disappointing as it was to find out that Fishburne would only return in The Matrix 4 in archived footage, All the Old Knives underdelivered even worse on the actor’s role. While audiences had hoped for a Fishburne presence that ultimately never came to fruition in Matrix 4, All the Old Knives actually promoted Fishburne as having a substantial role as CIA operative Vick Wallinger in the movie, which was quite far from the truth.
At least The Matrix 4 wasting Fishburne’s Morpheus went along with the notion that they had never truly promoted him as fully returning to the role, with his theorized appearance expected to not be substantial either way, but All the Old Knives did the opposite. Fishburne is hardly in All the Old Knives, with the actor only truly featured with a few lines during debriefings of the CIA crisis at hand or sly lines about hinting at killing the insider mole from the past case. While Fishburne’s promotional presence was meant to bolster star power in All the Old Knives’ cast supporting the core drama between Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton’s characters, his character ended up having very little bearing on the conflict, suggesting he could have been played by just about anyone. Considering Fishburne is one of the most revered thriller stars in Hollywood, All the Old Knives ultimately wasted him worse than the minor archive footage in The Matrix 4.
Fishburne’s role was actually meant to have a larger impact on All the Old Knives’ suspense-filled thriller, which is why it’s more disappointing than his absence in The Matrix 4. At least The Matrix Resurrections made it clear that Fishburne’s version of Morpheus wasn’t significant to the new story back in the trailers, which made the wasting of his powerful presence less of a shock. With Laurence Fishburne set to reprise his role as The Bowery King in the 2023 thriller film John Wick: Chapter 4, his next spy-like venture will hopefully see proper utilization of the actor’s prowess as compared to All the Old Knives.
