TBD | A disgraced detective returns to the big city to solve a series of murders. Directed by John Lee Hancock Starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto Review by Jon Kissel |
Denzel Washington is such a great actor that the Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period podcast could credibly exist for years. I listened to almost every episode and the hosts never allowed for the possibility that there was an alternative to their podcast title. However, Washington hasn’t been in a great movie since the mid-2000’s depending on if one is an American Gangster, Man on Fire, or Inside Man partisan, and the greatest director he’s worked with in the last fifteen years is probably himself. He’s gone down the old-man action path far more than the prestige path. Washington’s an actor of instant name recognition who can seemingly do whatever he wants and he wants to remake the Magnificent Seven. His latest, The Little Things, is another odd choice. I doubt Washington wanted to fulfill a career goal by working with the director of The Blind Side, John Lee Hancock. The Little Things’ triple-Oscar winner main cast does nothing to elevate a script that offers essentially nothing to the serial killer genre, including Washington who’s in paycheck mode. Add the lackluster presence of Rami Malek and the terminally off-putting Jared Leto, and this is a film whose existence is completely unnecessary.
In its opening scene, The Little Things evokes unflattering comparisons that it has no chance of living up to. A woman driving alone on a dark highway is belting out a pop ballad, as Catherine Martin so famously did in Silence of the Lambs. The heavy use of shadows and headlights also calls to mind Zodiac’s opening scene, so two titans of the genre are paid homage to/ripped off in the first minute, and that’s not accounting for the Seven vibe that’s all over the final act. Hancock first wrote this script shortly after Silence of the Lambs dominated the critical and cultural landscape. It might’ve seemed fresh if he got it made sooner, but 30 years later, Silence of the Lambs has been replicated so many times that there’s very little left to say about serial killers that dozens of movies and TV shows haven’t already gone over, to say nothing of the gross trend of true crime swallowing up every medium. Fine, homicide detectives have deadening jobs. Humans do terrible things to each other, and the pursuit of justice can easily slide into obsession. Hancock has nowhere near the vision or the inspiration to breathe new life into this subject.
Moving through this tired universe is Washington as disgraced cop Deke Deacon, a former LA murder detective now living in a California desert shack as a deputy. On an errand to his old department, he gets drawn into a series of murders that haven’t turned up any leads under detective Jim Baxter’s (Malek) direction. Because Deke is one of those cops who can cut through plot tangles with his preternatural perception and evidence walls, Leto’s Albert Sparma becomes the investigation’s new target. Deke infects Baxter with his brand of obsession, and the latter finds himself neglecting his family and his other work to trail Sparma, a greaseball who sure walks, talks, and acts like a serial killer. Deke and Baxter talk about god and look at ominous crosses on hills, while Hancock’s attempt to visualize Deke’s guilt over his failures means nothing less than that the actual women Deke’s failed to save follow him around in a recreation of Vincent Hanna’s nightmare from Heat.
The Little Things makes a move towards redemption in its final scenes as it’s revealed that our protagonist has been a corrupt and murderous cop the whole time, and his sins aren’t ones of omission but of commission. It’s the kind of reversal that I might admire in a better film, but everything is played in such a muted, dead register that any rooting interest has long since withered into nothing. A lot of that ineffectiveness is how rote and unsurprising and uninspired the film is up to the reveal, and another chunk is Leto’s presence as an actor who is always acting in the most ostentatious way possible. His Sparma is never anything but Leto as an eccentric weirdo. There’s no way he had a limp in the script: Leto probably just thought he should have more physical business. As written, the character is a complete red herring who likes to antagonize cops, and then in steps Leto with his meth face and his fake paunch to all but break the film when he shows up. His death, caused by Baxter in a burst of rage, evoked exactly nothing, not for the character’s absence nor for the guilt that Baxter would now have to live with.
The Little Things is a movie that exists, and that’s about all I can say for it. It’s not actively offensive at least, though it is mildly so with all the shots of naked female corpses. It’s hard not to find the behind-the-scenes blocking of a female corpse unsettling, like Hancock’s asked the actor to lie there in pallid makeup as he gets her breasts in frame while people talk around her. Even the always welcome presence of Michael Hyatt as the morgue worker can’t keep these scenes from feeling gross. Washington is reasonably watchable even at low energy and the ending is subversive, but subversive for miniscule effect. The Little Things needed to stay in the mid-90’s, or at least attach a director who can bring more than other people’s work to the table. C-
Moving through this tired universe is Washington as disgraced cop Deke Deacon, a former LA murder detective now living in a California desert shack as a deputy. On an errand to his old department, he gets drawn into a series of murders that haven’t turned up any leads under detective Jim Baxter’s (Malek) direction. Because Deke is one of those cops who can cut through plot tangles with his preternatural perception and evidence walls, Leto’s Albert Sparma becomes the investigation’s new target. Deke infects Baxter with his brand of obsession, and the latter finds himself neglecting his family and his other work to trail Sparma, a greaseball who sure walks, talks, and acts like a serial killer. Deke and Baxter talk about god and look at ominous crosses on hills, while Hancock’s attempt to visualize Deke’s guilt over his failures means nothing less than that the actual women Deke’s failed to save follow him around in a recreation of Vincent Hanna’s nightmare from Heat.
The Little Things makes a move towards redemption in its final scenes as it’s revealed that our protagonist has been a corrupt and murderous cop the whole time, and his sins aren’t ones of omission but of commission. It’s the kind of reversal that I might admire in a better film, but everything is played in such a muted, dead register that any rooting interest has long since withered into nothing. A lot of that ineffectiveness is how rote and unsurprising and uninspired the film is up to the reveal, and another chunk is Leto’s presence as an actor who is always acting in the most ostentatious way possible. His Sparma is never anything but Leto as an eccentric weirdo. There’s no way he had a limp in the script: Leto probably just thought he should have more physical business. As written, the character is a complete red herring who likes to antagonize cops, and then in steps Leto with his meth face and his fake paunch to all but break the film when he shows up. His death, caused by Baxter in a burst of rage, evoked exactly nothing, not for the character’s absence nor for the guilt that Baxter would now have to live with.
The Little Things is a movie that exists, and that’s about all I can say for it. It’s not actively offensive at least, though it is mildly so with all the shots of naked female corpses. It’s hard not to find the behind-the-scenes blocking of a female corpse unsettling, like Hancock’s asked the actor to lie there in pallid makeup as he gets her breasts in frame while people talk around her. Even the always welcome presence of Michael Hyatt as the morgue worker can’t keep these scenes from feeling gross. Washington is reasonably watchable even at low energy and the ending is subversive, but subversive for miniscule effect. The Little Things needed to stay in the mid-90’s, or at least attach a director who can bring more than other people’s work to the table. C-
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