← Back to Reviews
in
The Little Things
Despite the presence of three Oscar winning actors in the starring roles, 2021's The Little Things is a pretentious and slightly confusing crime drama that isn't quite what it should be thanks to a fuzzy screenplay that leads to an unsatisfactory conclusion.
Denzel Washington stars as Deacon, a laid back Kern County Deputy Sheriff who is sent to Los Angeles to pick up some evidence for a case and, upon his arrival, finds himself assisting in the hunt for serial killer. The case finds him working with Jim Baxter, played by Rami Malek a buttoned-down, by the book police lieutenant who works strictly through the evidence and can't get behind Deacon's use of instinct and his focus on "the little things" that pop up during a case which, on the surface, might not seem important.
As the story progresses, this case in Los Angeles is very similar to a case that Deacon worked in Kern County that is still occupying a whole lot of space in his head and still has him wrapped in guilt. There's so much guilt there that Deacon sees the victims everywhere and sometimes they even talk to him, only strengthening his resolve to help Baxter with his case.
Director and screenwriter John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr Banks, The Blind Side) has stumbled into relatively unfamiliar waters here as a filmmaker, clearly evidenced in the spotty screenplay that never really gives any real details into the case from his past, except for the fact that somewhere along the way, Deacon may have not played by the rules and endangered his job as well as the job of a medical examiner. This is also another one of those murder mysteries where we know who the murderer is the second he comes onscreen (brilliant performance by Jared Leto) and we can't wait for him get what's coming to him and anything less feels like a cheat.
Hancock put a lot of sweat into this project, though I wish a little more attention had been put into production values...several scenes are poorly lit and the audio made it hard to hear what appeared to be some pertinent dialogue in more than one scene. Still, Denzil is solid , as always, and Malek appears to be so intimated by Washington that is performance is a little too affected. But Jared Leto commands the screen in his creepiest performance since Chapter 27. Loved the detail Leto put into the physicality of the character, watch the walk, it's so obvious that Leto developed this character starting with the walk and worked from there. Wish the rest of the film could have been as good as Leto.
Despite the presence of three Oscar winning actors in the starring roles, 2021's The Little Things is a pretentious and slightly confusing crime drama that isn't quite what it should be thanks to a fuzzy screenplay that leads to an unsatisfactory conclusion.
Denzel Washington stars as Deacon, a laid back Kern County Deputy Sheriff who is sent to Los Angeles to pick up some evidence for a case and, upon his arrival, finds himself assisting in the hunt for serial killer. The case finds him working with Jim Baxter, played by Rami Malek a buttoned-down, by the book police lieutenant who works strictly through the evidence and can't get behind Deacon's use of instinct and his focus on "the little things" that pop up during a case which, on the surface, might not seem important.
As the story progresses, this case in Los Angeles is very similar to a case that Deacon worked in Kern County that is still occupying a whole lot of space in his head and still has him wrapped in guilt. There's so much guilt there that Deacon sees the victims everywhere and sometimes they even talk to him, only strengthening his resolve to help Baxter with his case.
Director and screenwriter John Lee Hancock (Saving Mr Banks, The Blind Side) has stumbled into relatively unfamiliar waters here as a filmmaker, clearly evidenced in the spotty screenplay that never really gives any real details into the case from his past, except for the fact that somewhere along the way, Deacon may have not played by the rules and endangered his job as well as the job of a medical examiner. This is also another one of those murder mysteries where we know who the murderer is the second he comes onscreen (brilliant performance by Jared Leto) and we can't wait for him get what's coming to him and anything less feels like a cheat.
Hancock put a lot of sweat into this project, though I wish a little more attention had been put into production values...several scenes are poorly lit and the audio made it hard to hear what appeared to be some pertinent dialogue in more than one scene. Still, Denzil is solid , as always, and Malek appears to be so intimated by Washington that is performance is a little too affected. But Jared Leto commands the screen in his creepiest performance since Chapter 27. Loved the detail Leto put into the physicality of the character, watch the walk, it's so obvious that Leto developed this character starting with the walk and worked from there. Wish the rest of the film could have been as good as Leto.