Denzel Washington? Rami Malek? Jared Leto? How bad could it be? That’s three legitimate Oscar winners on one page. Seriously, how bad could it be?
Well, in case you missed the briefing, The Little Things is a stark naked reminder that screenwriting is more important than acting. After all, it is The Little Things, like remembering what endears a character to an audience and, once endeared, what we want to see a character do. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t “call the perp for a bar date so you can sneak in to his apartment for an evidence hunt while he’s gone.” That won’t play.
Joe Deacon (Washington) was once the big dog in El Lay, but you’d never know it from his frighteningly humble exile to Kern County. To give you an idea of how out-of-place that banishment is, Kern County votes red. And ‘Deke,’ once the press conference detective of LAPD, is now Kern’s Barney Fife – does anybody get that reference at all? Bueller…? Bueller…? Does anybody get that reference. Damn, I’ve become meta-irrelevant. Anyhoo, asked to “pick up some evidence” from LAPD (and abuse some citizens, hey, when in Rome, amIright?), Deke returns to stomp the old grounds and a few toes while he’s at it … and maybe solve a murder or two.
Well, a lot has changed since Deke used to give press conferences, and in that I mean exactly one thing has changed: Jim Baxter (Malek) is now the press conference detective. And, I swear, literally everything else is the same, from the people who work there to their strangely hostile attitudes to the exact case they’re working on – one involving dead –yet unsoiled- prostitutes.
Baxter and Deacon butt heads until Baxter realizes who he’s dealing with and then it’s, “c’mon, meet my wife and kids, check out this crime scene, help me work this case…”
While being both cliché and counter-intuitive, adversarial roles for Washington and Malek make for a better narrative. Nowhere is this clearer than when they identify the perp halfway through (bet you can’t guess who it is) and then play cat-and-mouse games for the entire rest of the film. I feel like writer/director/future assassin John Lee Hancock had too much respect for his actors to have them square off properly. I suppose that’s great if this is a weird May-December romance, but The Little Things is a film about crime; and that particular genre comes with hostility and ego.
It’s difficult not to like Denzel Washington; I think he’s still my favorite actor. It’s difficult not to like Rami Malek; he’s always worth watching on screen. And this film is legitimately creepy in about three different spots. The set-up properly hooked the audience, but I feel this film did not reel us in. The second half of The Little Things left me empty and wishing John Lee could have told a proper crime story. Good start, bad finish. Two stars.
Rami, Jared, and Denzel, thespianism Lords
All combined on a project as per their accords
Gotta tell ya, Jack
Screenplay’s is kinda wack
Perhaps they’ll sit around discussing their awards
Rated R, 128 Minutes
Director: John Lee Hancock
Writer: John Lee Hancock
Genre: Introducing Oscar winners
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: I dunno, disgraced detectives, maybe? That can’t cannot possibly be a large group, can it?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who cry at wasted talent
