Denzel Washington, Rami Malek
“THE LITTLE THINGS” My rating C (HBO Max on Jan. 29)
Running time: 127 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Were there an Oscar for frustrated expectations, John Lee Hancock’s agonizingly moody “The Little Things” would clearly take home a statuette.
I mean, the elements audiences expect from a police-hunt-a-serial-killer drama are not only denied us in this instance, but obfuscated in a haze of existential navel-gazing.
Good thing the film features three — count ’em, three — Oscar-wining actors. The star power provided by Denzel Washington, Rami Malik and Jared Leto keeps us watching long after that nagging voice kicks in wondering where this sucker is going.
Following a prelude in which a teenage girl is stalked along a highway by an apparently murderous stranger, the film cuts to a northern California burg where Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) serves as a uniformed deputy. At the outset he’s sent by his boss down to Los Angeles to pick up some evidence needed for a case.
Deke is reluctant to make the trip. He was once a celebrated detective in the big city, but left five years ago after some sort of breakdown that ended his marriage and his career. Apparently he went a little bonkers trying to solve the case of a killer preying on young prostitutes.
By some fantastic coincidence, he arrives in LA in the midst of a new murder spree apparently perpetrated by the same never-apprehended fiend. In charge of the case is Jim Baxter (Malek), a dedicated cop and family man who has hit nothing but dead ends.
Figuring the killer Jim is looking for is probably the same one that got away from him years earlier, Deke decides to take a little vacation time to unofficially poke around the investigation.
Jared Leto
Meanwhile Deke calls in all the favors owed him after years as a cop. The coroner (Michael Hyatt) undertakes special lab work just for him. him. His former partner (Chris Bauer) runs interference.
Why they do this is a puzzlement, inasmuch as Deke’s behavior is, ahem, occasionally less than professional. I mean, the guy holds a one-sided conversation with the chilled corpse of a murder victim.
Through all this Deke takes a paternalistic interest in young Jim, who may be going down the same obsessive and destructive path that led to the older man’s exile. Beware of the little things,Deke warns, but that admonition may be less about collecting evidence and building a case than in keeping a vigilant eye on one’s own behavior.
(For reasons that never become clear, Hancock’s screenplay suggests the local cops are in the midst of a literal come-to-Jesus moment, in which the brass are imposing trickle-down piety on their employees. Weird.)
After considerable narrative meandering and naked dead girls, “The Little Things” leads us to Albert Sparma (Leto), a Jesus-looking creepozoid who had access to the apartment of one of the dead women (he’s an appliance repairman).
Albert is a manipulative genius who mercilessly taunts the cops without giving them anything substantial to work with. He seems to relish being the prime suspect in a string of gruesome murders. It’s fair to say that “The Little Things” only really comes to life when Leto starts to dominate the proceedings.
But is Sparma the killer or just a sleaze who likes poking the beast?
The film’s final act relies on a revelation about Deke’s past that struck this viewer as a prime example of Desperate Screenwriter 101.
Bottom line. Malek is wasted. Washington remains charismatic despite his character’s weirdness. Leto steals the show.
| Robert W. Butler
100% Agree with this review. Such a strange waste of talent. Also, Malek’s performance is so…well, odd, that one spends a substantial portion of the film wondering if HE is also a serial killer. Interesting that the film was written in 1993 — and was finally made decades later — perhaps the content back then was too similar to David Fincher’s 1990s serial killer film Se7en? (Even though The Little Things was actually written first)