Warning! SPOILERS for All the Old Knives.
While the primary CIA case in All the Old Knives is fictional, the film makes several mentions of Henry’s past work on the real-life Russian Nord-Ost siege. The Amazon Original movie isn’t based on a true story, but it does draw from many real-life crises handled by the CIA. The main case in All the Old Knives follows the CIA in Vienna as they try to save passengers on a hijacked plane headed for Austria, with the operatives trying to discern whether or not Chechen extremist Ilyas Shushani, Henry’s old contact in Moscow, is behind the attack.
When referring to the past connection between CIA operative Henry Pelham (Star Trek's Chris Pine) and Ilyas Shushani (Orli Shuka), All the Old Knives places them together amidst the Nord-Ost siege in Moscow. Within the film, Henry was sent to Moscow in order to gain information on the upcoming siege, with Ilyas being the Chechov bread baker who fed the Americans the Russian-related secrets. After the Nord-Ost siege ended in a disaster and the Russians had information on a future attack, the CIA had to give up one of their Chechen sources in order to achieve such details, with Henry choosing to expose Ilyas.
Henry and Ilyas aren’t real figures, but the Nord-Ost siege event that serves as the basis for their working relationship is a true story. As All the Old Knives' characters recall, the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, also known as the Moscow theater hostage crisis, was a terrorist event in which a group of armed Chechens in allegiance to the Islamist separatist movement seized the Drubrovka Theater holding 850 hostages, demanding that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya. In order to debilitate the insurgents, Russian forces released toxic gas into the theater while performing the rescue operation, which ultimately left all 40 attackers dead. However, pumping the gas also truly led to the deaths of 130 hostages, with so many innocent casualties taking a toll on All the Old Knives’ fictional main character, Henry.
All the Old Knives’ CIA crisis features many connections to 9/11 in terms of the plane hijacking, with the Amazon Original movie also citing that Putin had described Moscow’s Nord-Ost siege as their own 9/11. This detail explains why the CIA had so much involvement with the true hostage crisis, as it was only one year after the United States’ most devastating terrorist event. With the real-life Nord-Ost siege serving as the primary background for All the Old Knives’ fictional crisis, it’s also important to note that the film exaggerates some of the aftermath. While Chechen separatist leader Shamil Basayev truly did promise new attacks, it’s unclear whether Russia actually demanded that the Americans give up a Chechen contact in order to receive information on the reported upcoming sieges. As such, there isn’t enough widely-reported evidence to suggest that the CIA having to give up a source like Ilyas to the Russians actually happened.
As more modern thrillers draw from real-life hostage crises and terrorist attacks, the Moscow theater hostage crisis has increasingly been portrayed onscreen. Ahead of Chris Pine’s movie, the Nord-Ost siege appeared to serve as a basis for the opening hostage sequence in Christopher Nolan’s thriller Tenet. All the Old Knives’ true story also found its way into Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege video game, The Money Heist, FBI: International, and the HBO documentary Terror in Moscow. While All the Old Knives dramatizes the aftermath of the siege’s true story, its fictional connection to the film’s CIA crisis nonetheless makes the urgency of the situation all the more terrifying.