by Matt St Clair
A movie like The Little Things probably would’ve done very well in the 90’s. A time when crime thrillers such as Se7en, and another Denzel Washington starrer The Pelican Brief, could thrive financially and when actors rather than superheroes were bonafide box office draws. Given how Denzel is one of the few A-listers left who can open a movie on his name alone, The Little Things might've made a decent profit in a pre-COVID world. Yet, given the film’s poor and dated quality, it would’ve been best to let it live in the past.
Once Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) teams with LA detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) to help him solve a string of serial killings...
The Little Things perpetuates the tireless crime thriller trope of the women are always murder victims. Even crime thrillers such as The Girl on the Train and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which have a female protagonist at the center, involve them investigating a woman’s death.
If there’s one film cliche that The Little Things relievingly has, it’s a decent Denzel Washington performance. Saying that Denzel Washington gives a good performance is like saying water is wet, but Washington does give a good performance, giving this underwhelming thriller some mere greatness the way only a movie star of his caliber can. His co-stars don’t fare as well. Rami Malek is miscast as the tough-as-nails Det. Baxter while Jared Leto is incredibly static as Albert Sparma, the primary suspect, playing him as if he's a more stilted, less intimidating Hannibal Lecter.
Leto acts like he’s in a different film from his co-stars while the film experiences a mismatch in tone. It never knows whether it wants to be a mechanical cat-and-mouse thriller or a more meditative character drama about loss and regret. When it tries going the character drama route, that’s where the picture really shines. That's partially because of the heft of Washington’s performance and also because of his co-star Michael Hyatt; Her scenes with Washington are the picture’s only other highlight. Hyatt brings a fair amount of no-nonsense resolve to her portrayal of Flo Dunigan, a forensics scientist and old acquaintance of Duncan’s who helps him come to terms with his troubled past.
Those two performances are what keep The Little Things afloat. Other than that, The Little Things succumbs to a cookie-cutter thriller storyline and antiquated genre contrivances. It’s “little things” (yes, pun intended) like that which could've been fixed. C-
The Little Things is out now in theaters and streaming on HBOMax