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The Little Things
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
By Lucas Allen
Known for his stellar true-life dramas like “The Blind Side” and “The Founder,” writer/director John Lee Hancock decides to move to the thriller genre with a script he wrote nearly 30 years before. “The Little Things” was written as a dark thriller for the 90s only going through different directors and drafts before the director himself settled for making it a period thriller. It certainly has the potential to be a good movie, but maybe another draft or another run in the editing room could’ve made it a bit better.
In 1990 California, county sheriff Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) has to pick up evidence from the Los Angeles Police Department. However, he ends up reuniting with old friends there, where he was head detective before being let go five years before. Soon enough, he’s brought in to a crime scene by Sgt. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), where a young woman was brutally murdered. It has Deacon reliving his last case that got him off the force when the murder was similar to other murders by the same killer.
Thus, he and Baxter worked together to re-open the case while using it to solve the current one. Eventually, they find a suspect in a loner named Arthur Sparma (Jared Leto), who’s obsessed with true crime stories. But without any evidence, it puts the detectives in a game of cat-and-mouse with the suspect to try to catch him in the act.
Though it was written in the early 90s, the movie comes off as a dollar store clone of David Fincher’s “Seven,” trying to capitalize its success without replicating its style. It also feels like a half-baked version of “The Silence of the Lambs” without any high tension or suspense to keep you on edge. Not to mention, the character of Arthur Sparma can be seen as a hippie Hannibal Lecter, which makes it at times unintentionally hilarious. Surely enough, you’ll rather watch these mentioned titles than spend extra cash on seeing this mediocre title in the theater or on the HBO Max streaming service.
The biggest problem is the story is slow, pretentious and the film feels too long at 130 minutes. Much of the dialogue tries to be intelligent and meaningful, but it’s more like cliché gibberish that makes your head spin. Especially when you’re trying to follow the story, you’ll end up getting lost in one tangent after another before you try to make sense of its ending. But with its running time, the slow pace makes it aggravating to sit through and there’s too many quiet moments that’ll have you reaching for the phone. The movie could’ve cut 20-25 minutes of the boring stuff, but it would feel slightly different.
Then you have three Oscar-winning actors bring their most effort especially trying to elevate such lesser material. Washington uses enough of his charisma and charm to carry his weighty dramatic role pretty well. Malek is miscast, but he’s still finely committed to the part when being paired with the other actors. For all the shade he’s gotten for his Joker role in 2016’s Suicide Squad, Leto feels right at home in a creepy part that he’s evidently impersonating Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker as his little smite at DC.
While a lot of care went into this film, “The Little Things” sadly winds up short of its goals, becoming an outright boring experience. Hancock could’ve even been bothered to fix the script by changing it to present day or keep the plot straightforward. Instead, we have a movie that preferred to go on auto-drive without finding a proper ending to make it satisfying. If you’re curious, wait for cable.
THE MOVIE’S RATING: R (for violent/disturbing images, language, and full nudity)
THE CRITIC’S RATING: 2 Stars (Out of Four)
