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A note during the first scene of “The Little Things” – an effective cold opening, full of danger and suspense – indicates that we are in 1990. At first, I thought that meant that the action would quickly spread throughout the world. present, but instead the film, which is set primarily in Los Angeles, settles into a fairly generic version of the semi-recent past, sometimes going back a few years earlier.
There aren’t many historical or period details that would justify this choice. It mostly looks like a pretext to do away with cell phones, internet searches, GPS tracking, and other modern day conveniences that could ruin the analog vibe needed for an old-fashioned serial killer thriller. Which is fair enough. When it comes to creepy neo-noir resonance, it’s hard to beat a ringing payphone on an empty nighttime street or an envelope full of Polaroids.
Written and directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Denzel Washington as a tired professional with keen instinct and a battered conscience, “The Little Things” is an unapologetic throwback. He ruminates on the psychologically and spiritually damaging effects of police work as his two main detectives (Rami Malek alongside Washington) pursue an elusive and cunning murderer of women. You might think of “Se7en” or “Zodiac” or a lost season of “True Detective,” although this movie is less stylized than any of them.
And that’s in part because “The Little Things” is both a laggard and a precursor. (Time is a flat circle, soha know.) Hancock wrote the screenplay almost 30 years ago, and in the ’90s possible directors were Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. Hancock wrote the scripts for two Eastwood films during this decade, “A Perfect World” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”. Most recently, he directed “The Blind Side”, “Saving Mr. Banks” and “The Highwaymen”.
At their best, these films are competent rather than groundbreaking – admirable in their steadfast commitment to filmmaking even as their stories stubbornly cling to convention. This one takes it to a slightly higher level, although it doesn’t entirely avoid clichés like this: “You know, you and I have a lot in common,” a suspect told one of the detectives. That the apparent villain is played by Jared Leto doesn’t necessarily help matters.
But Leto, as an avowed “crime buff” with fearful and calm demeanor, isn’t bad. Malek as Jim Baxter, a zealous and ambitious Los Angeles detective flirting with career and personal disaster, is also very good. But who are we kidding? This movie is a coat that has been hanging in the closet for decades waiting for Washington to put it on.
Not that the man’s clothes suit him. It’s part of the texture of the performance. Joe Deacon, commonly referred to as Deke, begins the film as the Sheriff’s Deputy in a dusty expanse of Central California’s Valley. The khaki uniform does him no favors, and Deke carries himself like a sagging man under a long load – round in the shoulders, thick in the middle, slow and heavy in his stride.
You have the feeling that was not always the case. You get that feeling in part because you’ve seen Denzel Washington in this kind of role before, but the greats can play endless variations on the same theme. When Deke travels to Los Angeles for an irrelevant police case, we learn he was once an LAPD homicide. It receives a mixed reception. The captain (Terry Kinney) can barely stand to look at him. Deke’s former partner (Chris Bauer) and the medical examiner (Michael Hyatt) greet him warmly, but their kindness is bordered by pity and disappointment.
Deke teams up with Baxter to hunt down a killer who prey on young women, who may have been active when Deke was in the force. (The cop who appears to be Jim’s true partner, played by Natalie Morales, doesn’t have much to do.) The case takes turns expected, and others less, but as the clues and leads accumulate, the interest of the film is less in who made it than in what it does to the detectives. There is something Eastwoodian not only in Hancock’s clean and unpretentious staging, but also in the ethical universe he sketches. The line between good and evil is clear, but this does not banish moral ambiguity or save the righteous from guilt. It does not guarantee justice either.
It’s a heavy idea, and “The Little Things” doesn’t quite gain its weight. Thanks to Hancock’s craft and the discipline of the actors, this is more than watchable, but you are unlikely to be haunted, disturbed, or even surprised. You have never seen this exactly before. It’s just like that.
The small things
Noted R. Tortured souls and tortured bodies. Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max. Please review the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies in theaters.
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