A former Los Angeles detective turned small town deputy revisits a crime
that continues to haunt him.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Starring: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared
Leto, Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt, Terry Kinney, Natalie Morales
There's an exchange in The Little Things between its
detective protagonist and the film's nominal antagonist in which the
latter utters a variation of "We're a lot alike, you and I!" Yeah, we're
not dealing with the most original of scripts here. If writer/director
John Lee Hancock's thriller feels tired and dated, that's
probably because the script was written as far back as 1993. After
passing through the hands of such big name potential directors as Steven
Spielberg, Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty, Hancock's script was filed
away for over two decades before he decided to take a crack at it
himself.
Police thrillers have evolved somewhat since 1993, and while its
narrative feels very much of its era, Hancock's visuals are heavily
influenced by David Fincher, with sequences that feel borrowed from
Seven and Zodiac, but without any of the tension and skin-crawling atmosphere Fincher
brought to those projects.
The Little Things is the classic story of a grizzled
veteran cop reopening an old case that has haunted him for years. It's
1990 and former Los Angeles detective Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a lowly deputy in Bakersfield. Asked to retrieve a piece of
evidence from his old LA precinct, Deacon has an anti-meet-cute with Jim
Baxter (Rami Malek), the hotshot young detective who has taken on
his old role. Despite the pair getting off on the wrong foot, Baxter has
a lot of respect for the veteran and invites him to tag along to a
murder scene. There, Deacon notices how the MO is similar to the case
that caused him to quit his post five years earlier, in which the bodies
of three young women were found naked, bound and gagged.
Taking an abrupt vacation from Bakersfield, Deacon checks into a crummy
motel of the sort where Starsky and Hutch were always harassing
suspects, and begins re-investigating the case of the triple murder
while accompanying Baxter on his own current investigation. Together
they identify a chief suspect in sinister repairman Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a true crime obsessive who seems to know an awful lot about the
murders. Is he their "boy" or is he simply having fun stringing them
along?
Hancock's film took something of a critical pasting on its US release,
with most critics pointing out its lack of originality and the oddly
mannered performances of Leto and Malek. While it's hard to argue with
such takes, I wasn't so bothered by the failure of the film to deliver
anything new in terms of storytelling, probably because I watch a lot of
'70s TV movies and The Little Things heavily evokes their
character first, plot second vibe (its ending shares many similarities
with Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 TV flick 11th Victim). I've never been much of a plot guy, so it didn't bother me that
Hancock's script felt so rusty in its various underwhelming twists and
turns.
The relationship between Deacon and Baxter kept my interest because
it's the one aspect of the film that doesn't feel conventional. The
initial tease of the usual bickering mismatched cops trope is quickly
done away with as the two men put aside any philosophical disagreements
on how the investigation should be conducted. While this makes for a
lack of conflict, there's something almost sweet about Deacon's paternal
relationship with the young dick.
As for Leto and Malek? Well I have no idea what Malek is doing here. He
interprets Baxter's by-the-book nature so literally that he comes off as
an android, never appearing to blink, and the effect is like watching a
deepfake of Malek rather than the actor himself. Leto is as out there as
you might expect from Jared Leto playing a potential serial killer. I
found it decidedly odd that he wears his work clothes throughout the
whole film, even on his days off, and I can only imagine that was one of
Leto's notorious "method acting" choices. Yet while I rolled my eyes
when Leto first appeared, I have to admit he did get under my skin and
he makes for a genuinely creepy presence. Washington is his usual solid
self, though the movie can't quite make its mind up whether his Deacon
is a psychologically scarred misanthrope ala Morgan Freeman in
Seven or a wise-cracking Philip Marlowe type.
It's probably fitting that The Little Things is debuting
on VOD rather than being granted a theatrical run, as it boasts an
ending that will have you rewinding just to make sure you didn't miss
something. I don’t mean it has some outrageous twist, but rather that
it's so anti-climactic that you'll convince yourself the closing moments
have some greater meaning you failed to pick up on. But no, it really
does offer an "Is that it?" ending for the ages.
