Review/Opinion

Little things mean a lot

‘The Little Things’ fails to live up to its cast, film influences

Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a college-educated detective with a young family, goes strictly by the book in his hunt for a serial killer in John Lee Hancock’s 1990-set crime thriller “The Little Things.”
Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a college-educated detective with a young family, goes strictly by the book in his hunt for a serial killer in John Lee Hancock’s 1990-set crime thriller “The Little Things.”

At least you can give the film credit for overtly acknowledging its influences: John Lee Hancock's serial-killer flick opens with a young woman (Sofia Vassilieva), driving down a quiet highway in L.A., exuberantly singing along to a pop-hit ("Roam"), as our would-be killer sizes her up to be his next victim. The year is 1990 -- "Silence of the Lambs" (birthplace of an eerily similar scene), came out in 1991; "Se7en," the film Hancock's film most closely hews to, in 1995 -- and the era is rife with obsessional killers, looking to create exquisitely conceived murder displays, while artfully dodging the police in the process.

Other films get similar shout-outs in Hancock's screenplay, but it's David Fincher's seminal macabre mystery ("Se7en") that the writer/director most purposefully apes. In the place of Morgan Freeman's experienced detective, we have a different senior badge, the venerable Joe "Deke" Deacon (Denzel Washington), once a successful, big-time L.A. homicide detective, now a mere "dep" out in distant, provincial Kerns County; Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a college-educated detective with a young family, fits neatly into the Brad Pitt role; and, as our cryptic killer, Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), runs a variation of the infamous Kevin Spacey routine, so secure in his beating the system, he continues to taunt the cops even after they've identified him as the killer.

As such, the film progresses in pretty easily recognizable movements, and for the first two acts, at least, it hangs agreeably enough within the stylish confines of its source materials. By the third act, though, it's clear Hancock doesn't have nearly the vision or intellectual conviction of the films he so clearly admires, and it more or less falls to pieces.

More interesting than anything in the script, or the art production, however, is the fascinating clash of styles between the film's heralded trio of Oscar-winning leading men. Washington, in "intentionally reduced" mode -- his character, it turns out, has his reasons to have left for the boondocks -- lowers his otherworldly charisma to mere human levels, utilizing his trademark smile appreciably as a psychological weapon (especially during a sizzling interrogation scene), rather than full-on assault.

Malek, whose swollen upper lip often gives his mouth an odd, smile-like upturn, is, as always, never quite present in his scenes, as if perpetually distracted by something else going on in his head. Watching one of his performances, you never quite trust his character's intentions, even when it's clear we're meant to. His characters have such a self-consciously distracted air, you're perpetually waiting for them to reveal their true natures before it's too late.

Rounding out the crew, we have Leto, the most malleable of the three -- here, with rock star hair, a complex, extended circle beard, and a flattened voice pattern that makes him sound a bit like Gary Cole's Lumbergh character from "Office Space." As always, a method-sort, Leto changes his body language for the role, affecting a kind of loping limp, with his feet turned out, such that he saunters around like someone walking in soaking wet clothes.

With each actor performing his high-end thespian paces in his own distinct manner, the collisions among them veer from the scintillating to the devoutly off-putting, as if each character comes from a different film, only to find themselves locked up in an interrogation room together, very much looking for the rest of the film they're meant to be in. It's one of those "sum-of-their-parts" scenarios, where each man's performance is interesting in and of itself, and stocked with strong moments (Washington's line reading of "You know me" in answer to an old friend's query about his current wellbeing involves a particularly poignant subtle pursing of his lips, and studied pause that adds multitudes to his character's bearing), but they never quite feel from the same production.

For all its studied controversy, "Se7en" became such a cultural touchstone because the micro-managing Fincher knew precisely what he was evoking with each detail. Hancock might get the atmosphere and time-frame about right, but he doesn't have control enough over the other details -- including the actors' performances -- to make it work the way he wants. In final homage to Fincher's epic, Hancock's film ends, as "Se7en"does, in the remote desert outside L.A., but here there's no final emotional twist, just a lot of dust and half-dug graves.

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‘The Little Things’

83 Cast: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Sofia Vassilieva, Terry Kinney, Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt, Natalie Morales

Director: John Lee Hancock

Rating: R, for violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity

Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes

Playing theatrically and streaming on HBO Max

Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) and LAPD detectives Jamie Estrada (Natalie Morales) and Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) arrive at the scene of a crime in John Lee Hancock’s psychological thriller “The Little Things.”
Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) and LAPD detectives Jamie Estrada (Natalie Morales) and Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) arrive at the scene of a crime in John Lee Hancock’s psychological thriller “The Little Things.”

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