The Little Things

Director: John Lee Hancock
Starring: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt, Terry Kinney, Natalie Morales
Running Time: 128 min.
Rating: R

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

For much of its running length, John Lee Hancock's crime thriller The Little Things seems as if it isn't going anywhere, before excitingly arriving at a last act that pretty much confirms it went nowhere. Set in the early '90's, it attempts to channel the spirit and aesthetic of period-specific thrillers like Se7en or Copycat, but eventually settles on what resembles a poor man's Zodiac. With a basic plot best described as "textbook movie murder" it lacks the hook of those two former efforts and while a gripping opening attempts to invoke that latter masterpiece, it rarely delivers on its early promise Moody, atmospheric, and anchored by three performances in search of better material, the film technically has a lot going for it, which only enhances the disappointment as the narrative plainly plays out. 

Before revealing itself as a dark, somewhat messy character study about a pair of mismatched detectives, the case(s) that monopolize the majority of the picture couldn't be any less involving. While it's possible we've just been so burned out by the proliferation of streaming true crime documentaries that any fictionalized account would fall short, this seems especially problematic by any standard. It's almost as if Hancock cherry picked the least intriguing elements of every murder that's occurred in the Los Angeles area during the 80's and 90's and  recycled it on screen. The Night Stalker is explicitly mentioned and will inevitably be the case to which this fictional one is compared, but the gruesome crime scenes here are a Cliffs Notes version of that, without any meaningful context or insight into the psychology behind it.

It's 1990 and Kern County deputy sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon (Denzel Washington) is called into the L.A. Sheriff's Department to collect evidence when he encounters lead detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), who's spearheading an investigation into a string of new murders resembling the serial killings an obsessed Deacon couldn't solve when he held that position. After a rocky introduction, Jim asks Deacon to stick around and lend his expertise, initially unaware of the tumultuous circumstances that led to his departure from the department five years prior. 

When more victims are found and a female jogger is reported missing, a series of clues lead Deacon to creepy, eccentric repair store employee Albert Sparma (Jared Leto). As the similarties between his unsolved killings and this case pile up, so again do Deacon's obsessions and mental fragility, with the two detectives certain they've found their guy. Crime officionado Sparma knows it, tangling both in his twisted web and taunting them to make a move in hopes it will lead to their self-destruction. And given their obsession with exposing him, he just may end up being right.  

If detectives with wildly differing personalities teamed to investigate murders is a painfully familiar trope, it's still one that can be very effective when properly executed. If nothing else, the script goes all out with Washington's Deacon having been transferred, demoted, divorced, already suffered a major health crisis, and experiencing traumatic flashbacks due to a mystery event that's eventually revealed.  Just about the only thing he isn't is an alcoholic a day away from retirement, though we can't be completely sure. All of it seems carefully piled on to make him seem more interesting and sympathetic than he actually is, when it's essentially just another take on the many law enforcement roles Washington's played over the past decade plus. Take your pick. 

Washington's character may brings little new to the table, but at least Malek's initially presents itself as something different. His Jim Baxter comes across as the type of "emotional vampire" Bret Easton Ellis could have written about in 1990, giving off vibes vibes of a sociopathic predator rather than a detective. Our suspicion this has more to do with Malek's performance than the writing is confirmed when that's abandoned and he settles into a much more recognizable cop role when Deacon starts riding with him. Aside from some early tension, there's not a lot of push-pull in this relationship, as they rarely challenge each other in philosophies, morality or criminology in any way as they search for clues to nail this guy. 

The film's title, as the characters take great pains in repeatedly telling us, refers to the little details detectives have to look for that lead them to the perpetrator. You know, like where their car was serviced or what kind of sandwiched they had for lunch. Well, no kidding. Watching this, you can't help but be reminded of Netflix's great, now cancelled series, Mindhunter, which provided the deepest of dives into the minds of serial killers through the men who were investigating them. That and the aforementioned Night Stalker case both featured dueling partners, and while's there's a deliberate, occasionally successful attempt at capturing the mood of both, the screenplay just never gets there, instead coming closer to James Patterson's latest Alex Cross installment. 

From his introductory interrogation scene on, Jared Leto leaves a sinister imprint as the suspected killer, infusing the proceeedings with a dose of much needed intrigue and psychology, as the detectives not only attempt to prove he's behind this, but what exactly makes him tick. It's probably the closest the this gets to becoming what it strives for, but even as delightfully skeevy and off-kilter as Leto's performance is (complete with greasy hair and a middle-age paunch), I couldn't help but wish it existed in a film with better ideas of what to do with it. 

The finale heads in a truly exhilarating, even unexpected direction until you realize that it hinges on a major character letting his guard down in a way that stretches believability based upon what we know about him. It also doesn't really amount to all that much, aside from drawing unfavorable comparisons to the infinitely superior Se7en. Despite that, you can still appreciate the intention of presenting a kind of contagious obsession between homocide cops and their cases. The extent to which any of it clicks can be attributed to Washington and Malek's performances, as it's hard not to be impressed by these two top talents bouncing off each another, regardless of what they have to work with. Even more noteworthy is composer Thomas Newman's elgiac score, which is pretty much head and shoulders above any other aspect of the film and arguably nomination-worthy under better circumstances.

Having written one of my all-time favorites in Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World and recently directed the underrated The Founder, Hancock is one of the more reliable mainstream filmmakers around, but this isn't a genre he's ever dipped into. So while it at least gives me some joy to report this is about as well directed as can be from a lacking script, he also wrote it, which makes the results a bit tougher to stomach. The Little Things is almost shockingly derivative of so many other works of crime fiction that you almost expect to see a head in a box before the closing credits arrive. Even its ending, arguably the film's strongest stretch, is undone in hindsight by the fact that it makes the whole enterprise feel like a waste of time, sending us right back to where we started, waiting for something more important to reveal itself.