The Little Things

 

Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a Kern County sheriff’s deputy. Previously a Los Angeles homicide investigator, his commitment to his last case led to a heart attack and a divorce. Dispatched back to LA to collect evidence, Deacon joins Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek), a LASD detective who is investigating a series of murders reminiscent of one of Deacon’s old cases. With the FBI poised to take over the investigation, Deacon and Baxter make one final push to solve it. Will Deacon’s mentorship give Baxter the boost he needs or lead him down the same self-destructive path?

 

Writer/director John Lee Hancock first conceived of The Little Things decades ago, and it shows. Not only does it have the feel of a 1990s crime thriller, but it also echoes several films in the genre. The opening cat-and-mouse car chase down a darkened California highway calls to mind a particular scene in Zodiac while pieces of Se7en, The Pledge, and Insomnia also seem embedded in this film’s DNA.

 

Given the cast involved, one can be forgiven for expecting the performers to elevate the material. Sadly, for the most part, they don’t. Washington, the lone exception, is excellent, as usual. When we first see Deacon, he seems affable enough and at ease with his new role, but the more time the film spends with him, the more apparent that he is still an obsessively driven mess. As Baxter, Malek is subdued to the point of blandness for most of the film before taking a turn toward the end. The third Oscar winner of the bunch, Jared Leto, shows up as prime suspect Albert Sparma, a long-haired weirdo who delights in trolling the investigators. It’s a distractingly showy performance, and the character comes across as an obvious red herring.

 

Derivative as it may be, The Little Things is mostly competently, if unremarkably, made. It’s atmospheric, boosted by a tense Thomas Newman score. The last third sees Hancock try to move beyond genre cliches to probe the psychological toll the investigations have exacted on the investigators, but the film does so in a rather convoluted way.

 

All told, The Little Things offers a few bright spots for genre fans, but it is also far more forgettable than its assembled talents suggest it should be.