'The Little Things' Gets A Lot Of Big Things Wrong

HBO's new crime drama starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto is a hot mess.

The Little Things is a movie I wanted to like—great cast, serial-killer mystery—but ultimately walked away from confused and disappointed.

The film, which was written and directed by John Lee Hancock, simply has no idea what it wants to be, and eventually gets lost in contrivances and plot holes.

Denzel Washington puts in a great performance for much of the film, though his character—ex-detective Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon—is ultimately not as interesting as we were led to believe. The big “twist” about his backstory feels sloppy and poorly timed, adding to the confusion of the final act.

Rami Malek, who is excellent elsewhere in shows like Mr. Robot and the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, seems uncomfortable in his role as a hotshot police detective / family man who, inexplicably, goes from ace detective to class moron by the film’s conclusion.

Jared Leto turns up halfway through the film and, somehow, manages to steal the show. Some might find his performance a little over-the-top, but in a movie this muted and flat I found his creepy portrayal of a maybe-serial killer, constantly taunting the police, hilariously weird. A breath of fresh air in a very stuffy 2 hour film.

The story, in brief, centers on the killings of a number of girls in and around Los Angeles. The killer doesn’t discriminate by race, but he does seem to have a type, and he poses his victims in macabre, but not particularly interesting, ways after he kills them. This is no Hannibal style Chesapeake Ripper posing, or anything on par with the twisted corpses in the first season of True Detective. But not every serial killer has an eye for the aesthetic.

Deke worked this same case years ago but apparently had a mental breakdown and had to quit, moving out of the city to Kern County where he’s now a uniformed deputy instead of a hotshot detective. On a separate case, he ventures back to his old stomping ground where he’s immediately caught back up in the old case alongside Jim Baxter (Malek) and some of his old police buddies.

So far so good. We’ve got a buddy cop movie and a serial killer mystery. The movie quickly turns into a story more about the toll the job takes on the detectives and less about figuring out who the killer is and that’s fine also. Deke is passionate about solving the case, but he tells Baxter he’s doing it for himself, not the girls. And we learn later that the cops care more about watching each other’s back than bringing justice about. That’s fine, too. It’s the execution where things start to fall apart.

Partly this is how the film is edited and directed. It’s just a mess. Some of the cinematography is bizarre, and not in a good way. One breakfast scene hops between different camera angles like the scene is on speed. We’re left perplexingly dizzy. There’s one deeply confusing car “chase” and flashbacks that just pop in out of nowhere. All sorts of unintentional confusion, jarring cuts and sloppy filmmaking.

Then there are the little things—the titular phrase Deke keeps using as he educates hotshot Baxter on how to investigate a case, something that said hotshot seems completely incapable of on his own. The little things that The Little Things gets wrong are numerous. The film’s screenplay was written in the 90s’ apparently, and the movie itself takes place in 1990, though there are lots of little careless moments that betray that time period, like a scene with prostitutes standing in front of a T-Mobile store. In 1990. Or even Baxter’s house, which felt like something plucked directly out of the last decade. You never get a sense of time in The Little Things, or when you do it’s quickly shattered.

The bad editing coupled with a host of strange writing choices make the entire film a chore to watch. Dialogue is hard to follow. Scenes jump so quickly between one to the next that simply following the story—or catching all the lines—is nigh impossible.

Leto’s character, Albert Sparma, very nearly saves the day. He’s almost unrecognizable for one thing, both in his appearance and his voice. Leto is no stranger to portraying weird characters, but he’s particularly fun here. His performance is easily the best part of the film. It’s still not enough.

Some spoilers follow.

Things are revitalized when Sparma enters the picture, and fall apart once the investigation really takes off and the two detectives go rogue for no real reason.

For one thing, there was no reason to withhold Deke’s backstory until the end. It was supposed to be this big “aha” moment, but it fell flat on its face. The movie would have been better served showing us what happened in the beginning and building from there.

Meanwhile, bizarre story choices abound. At one point Deke and Baxter trick Sparma into leaving his apartment so that Deke can illegally search it. Baxter is supposed to watch and “honk twice” if he sees Sparma return. But this follows a scene where Sparma leaves on a bus to go to a strip club and is gone literally the entire day. Why not search his house then? Or have one detective bring him in for more questioning while the other breaks in? It makes no sense.

Later, Baxter agrees to get into a car with Sparma, his chief suspect, without telling his partner who is getting coffees a block away and without letting anyone else know. It’s absolutely absurd. No detective is going to get into the car like this and drive out into the middle of nowhere without backup.

The Little Things has been compared (unfavorably) to Seven, a film that came out in 1995—two years after The Little Things was written. In that movie, the killer manages to get one detective to accompany him out to a remote location. He does so in order to trick the detective into becoming part of his twisted Seven Deadly Sins plan, and his trick works. It’s a powerful, terrible revelation.

In The Little Things we have a similar setup with absolutely no payoff. We do not discover Baxter’s wife and daughters in a hole in the desert.

We find ourselves watching a timid Baxter dig holes with his back turned to Sparma, looking for a body he never finds. Baxter, at this point, is a shell of a character and his motivations are muddled and thin. When he snaps, it feels forced. So do the events that follow.

It’s as disappointing a conclusion to the investigation as Deke’s big backstory reveal. Neither does much to propel the plot or develop these characters in interesting ways. Ultimately, everything that takes place in the final act only serves to muddy the waters and confuse viewers.

The Little Things could have been a decent movie. Hell, with some rewrites and a better director, it could have been a damn good movie. It had the bones, just not the blood or the meat, the stuff that makes a film come to life. Terrible pacing and editing combined with a story that ends up going nowhere and a hugely disappointing third act all conspire to make this a swing and a miss. Leto does his level best—and he’s genuinely funny and creepy—but it’s not enough to save a bad movie from itself.

Just watch Seven again. It’s the same length, takes place in the 90s’ with great characters and a clever mystery, and it’s a far, far better film in every way imaginable.

1 out of 4 diablos. A serial killer flick should be much more diabolical.