Denzel Washington returns to a familiar form in neo-noirish crime psycho-drama filled with Oscar winners
The Little Things
Starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek & Jared Leto
Directed by John Lee Hancock
R
In theaters and on HBO Max Jan. 29, 2021
If you watch TV, odds are pretty good you come across an occasional cop show or two.
Nearly 20 percent of all television programming is about police officers, detectives and other law-enforcement types solving crimes, on hit “procedurals” like Law & Order SVU and NCIS, two of the longest-running dramas of any kind currently on the air.
And if you dig shows like that, you’ll likely dig watching Denzel Washington dig deep into this crime-drama thriller, playing a veteran patrolman on the long trail of a serial killer with a kink for young California women.
Washington is Joe “Deke” Deacon, a Bakersfield deputy sheriff who teams with a younger, slicker LAPD detective, Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), when circumstances bring Deke outside his usual jurisdiction—and back to the the very precinct where he once worked.
Though Deke and Baxter are from two different worlds, practically different eras of policing, they become partners when the evidence continues to mount, the body count continues to rise—and the search narrows to what appears to be a prime suspect.
Solving a case like this one, Deke tells Baxter, requires endless commitment and paying attention to detail—anything that a suspect might do, or leave behind as a clue. “Little things are important, Jimmy,” he says. “It’s little things that get you caught.”
Director/writer John Lee Hancock—whoseother films include Saving Mr. Banks, The Blind Side, The Rookie and The Alamo—certainly knows how to put little things, all the details, into crafting a well-built movie story. This, his first film since The Highwaymen (2019)—the true-ish tale of the Texas Rangers who brought down outlaws Bonnie and Clyde—chugs along with fine-tuned, neo-noir procedural precision, ratcheting up the tension and layering on the complexity as Deke bores down into the nitty-gritty of his investigation…and into something about this case, bringing him back to Los Angeles, that’s particularly troubling.
Something from the past is haunting him, and the new murders bring all the old memories up, out of the shadows, like ghosts.
Washington, one of Hollywood’s most dependable stars, is a two-time Oscar winner (Glory and Training Day), with a resume that stretches into nearly 60 films. We’ve watched him grow as a actor, from TV’s St. Elsewhere in the 1980s through Oscar-nominated roles in Cry Freedom (1988), Malcolm X (1993), The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2013) and Fences (2017). But he’s always had a thing for cops and robbers and guys on one extreme of the law or the other, in movies like The Equalizer franchise, 2 Guns, Safe House, American Gangster, Inside Man, The Bone Collector and Fallen. Now, at age 66, it’s perfectly appropriate for him to play Deke, the veteran officer, with a bit of a paunch, his hair mostly grey, and a weary, dogged determination that calls for more brains than brawn.
His performance seems, in other words, completely authentic, wholly believable—and so very Denzellian.
Whetting our appetite for his even juicier appearance later this year as a villain in the new James Bond flick, No Time to Die, Malek—who also has an Oscar (for playing Queen frontman Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody—is virtually unreadable and inscrutable, especially at first, as the icy, media-saavy, big-city detective. But he thaws a bit when he learns that he’s not so different from his older, more experienced, Bakersfield counterpart, especially when it comes to becoming obsessesed over a vexing case.
And speaking of villains, Jared Leto—also an Oscar winner (Dallas Buyers Club)—plays prime suspect Albert Sparma, a textbook-case weirdo even creepier than his creepy-sounding name. Not to mention his admission that’s he’s a crime wonk, he looks like Charles Manson and he even has a copy of Helter Skelter on his bookcase. He taunts the police, knowing they don’t have enough hard evidence to hold him, much less arrest him. Is he really the the killer?
Little Things keeps you guessing—and keeps Denzel and Rami digging, while dropping clues like bread crumbs all over Los Angeles. A local radio station provides a backdrop of classic pop and soul—and perhaps a wink-wink soundtrack of the investigation’s progress, as Mary Wills’ “My Guy” accompanies Deke’s eureka moment when he thinks he “makes” his suspect, or Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” plays as he tails him down the interstate.
But the movie most reminded me of another classic song, the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” in which Mick Jagger sings, “Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints.” As Deke and Baxter move closer to solving the crime, burrowing deeper into their investigation, the movie likewise blurs the lines, between law breakers and law keepers, guardian angels and personal demons, plunging its story past a police procedural into darker, murkier waters with more disturbing undertones.
Although Little Things deals with some ghastly, gristly crimes at its core, it’s not a particularly gory movie; all of its awfulness happens off-camera, or is seen in photographs. You’ll see some blood and some bodies, but it’s not meant to gross you out. It’s a multiple-murder mystery for you to solve, a puzzle for you to put together, and a solidly effective psycho-thriller with some twists you probably won’t see coming.
It’s like binge-watching a whole TV crime-solving series in one big, Oscar-star movie gulp.
“The past becomes the future becomes the past…,” Deke says. What does he mean? Baxter and Sparma find out, and you will, too.
Just pay attention to the little things—because yes, they are important.
The Media Tourist 