Jan 30, 2021
The Little Things wants to be Seven but it's not even half of Seven (three-point-five?). It's a meandering movie that doesn't quite commit to being a prestige character study or a grisly, pulpy serial killer thriller, and so it operates in a middle-ground that achieves little more than prolonged boredom. It's far too long, far too slow, and with not nearly enough excitement or intrigue or depth.
In 1990, Joe "Deke" Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a LASD deputy and living out his final days on the force in the relative anonymity of the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles. He used to be a big time L.A. cop but got far too involved in series of murders, and his obsession lead him to a heart attack, a divorce, and being removed from his office. Deacon delivers evidence to Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), the new chief detective on a series of murders that may be a continuation from Deacon's days. The two men work together to untangle the details and target their primary suspect, Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a bow-legged, greasy-haired creep who maybe confessed eight years ago.
The Little Things was originally written in the 90s by writer/director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) and it's easy to see why. The 1990s was a heyday of serial killer thrillers; it felt like any studio would greenlight a project as long as the crazed killer had a gimmick to their murders ("This guy only kills people on Friday… because you can't eat meat on Friday?"). While the preponderance of these kinds of movies has shifted to the ever-flowing world of direct-to-video (look for The Hangman, where Al Pacino chases a killer literally playing the game hangman with victims), there is still a perverse fascination with true crime culture and serial killers to be exploited by a canny writer. We still love these kinds of stories when done well. HBO's True Detective has also taken the serial killer formula and transformed it into a contemplative, long-form character study that looks just as much at the flawed detectives as it does the killers. Over the course of eight elegiac episodes, True Detective can take the time to immerse you in the sordid and portentous details of these people, their cases, the lingering questions, and their demons and doubts made flesh. The depth of the tortured, flawed characters and the complexities of the cases are what sustain the multiple-episode investment (exception: season two). With a movie, you must be more judicious with your precious two hours of time for storytelling. This preamble was a long way of saying The Little Things doesn't fit as either. Its cases and characters lack the depth to justify the time dwelt, and the thrills are decidedly dimmer, denying a serial killer audience a compelling case, compelling characters, and a unique killer.
I'm going to summarize the two-hour-plus plot for you now: two cops investigate a series of serial murders. They think they have a culprit. They tail the suspect. A slightly surprising ending that lacks the shock and contemplation I think Hancock is looking for. The end. I'll keep it vaguer to preserve spoilers but suffice to say that is not enough plot for an investigation. I recently re-watched Seven, one of my favorite films of all time and a masterpiece in its genre, and it has a natural propulsion to it where each clue leads to the next by design from its grandly clever psychopath. You know there are seven deadly sins and each new victim is another step closer to achieving that mad goal. The story engine keeps the plot driving forward. With The Little Things, there are some bodies and a whole lot of waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Paired with the placid pacing, it sure makes The Little Things feel like it's missing a big picture.
There are also some moments that ripped me out of the movie, mostly involving a disconnect between what is intended on the page and what is delivered on the screen. We're told that these characters are so obsessed, yet they don't come across that way. Sure, they follow Sparma because he's so obviously a guilty-looking suspect, but we don't witness the lengths they'll go and the people they'll push away in order to close their case. In the end, Hancock approaches this territory, but it feels like a stab at subversion and relevance the rest of the movie has been missing. It feels like Hancock had two hours of one kind of thriller and then in the final five minutes said, "Eh, who cares?" This climax also involves a professional detective making so many bad decisions about his own personal safety that I felt my eyes rolling out of my head. It's like Hancock is using the character's dumb choices to declare how obsessed he is with finding the truth, and yet we didn't witness this obsession earlier when he was making good decisions. Baxter is supposed to be a family man and a religious man, yet Malek is playing him so devoid of emotion and the script doesn't present anything meaningful for his domestic life, that he feels more like a robot with a flimsy back-story provided as a default setting. Then there's Deacon's monologuing to the corpses of the dead women. He also sees ghosts of the victims. If the movie was presenting this as a sign of his tortured psyche, it should have gone all-in. Have him converse with them all the time, have them reappear and whisper in his ear, have the new crime scenes trigger the appearances of victims from the old crime scenes, take this unique angle and take ownership of it, really separate from the glut of other serial killer thrillers. Alas, it's just an awkward personality motif that occurs from time to time to provoke an eyebrow raise.
All three central actors have won Oscars for their acting, and while nobody is outright bad, they all seem to be delivering wrongly attuned performances. Washington (Fences) dials down that natural charisma to go full quiet intensity, and there are few actors who can be as intimidating with looks and hushed words as this man. Except he's supposed to be haunted and the wear and tear of the man's past lacks weight because of the performance choice. The pain and struggle seem to be suffocated in that steady steely Washington glower. Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) is too detached to convincingly play his young family man coming unglued thanks to the case. He's playing the role like he's secretly going to revealed as the real killer in a hasty last-second twist. Leto (Blade Runner 2049) is inherently drawn to off-putting oddballs and his appearance halfway through provides a necessary jolt for the movie. The problem is that he's so creepy, he's so weird, he's so desirous of attention, that it makes the character overwhelmingly obvious. He's not interesting so much as he's just a neon sign flashing "Guilty," and there are only two ways to go with this, neither exactly fulfilling given what has preceded. The best scene in the whole dirge of a movie, by far, is the interrogation with all three actors feeding off one another.
The Little Things feels like a dated copy of 1990s serial killer thrillers without anything new to offer besides the star wattage of its cast. It's even set in the 90s for no real reason than to deny its characters access to cell phones and the Internet. The look of the movie is awash in the cool, moody style of David Fincher's signature look, like Hancock and his technical artists were reviewing Seven and Zodiac and aiming for a fawning homage to a modern master of crime cinema. I would advise people to just watch Seven again, or even any of the many junky serial killer thrillers from the 1990s (Copycat, anyone?). The Little Things just isn't that interesting. The main characters are threadbare, the women are either colleagues, wives, or corpses, the plot meanders for far too long, the pacing is turgid, and it lacks memorable set pieces and reveals that linger. It needed to be better, or worse, but instead it's just imitation David Fincher visual wallpaper.
Nate's Grade: C
Verified