'The Little Things' Film Review

“The Little Things” is written and directed by John Lee Hancock and follows two detectives (Denzel Washington and Rami Malek) who team up to hunt down a serial killer (Jared Leto) in 1990’s Los Angeles.

The new crime drama is the first movie produced by Warner Bros. outside of “Wonder Woman 1984” to be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max after they made the major announcement that their entire 2021 catalog would be released on both platforms.

The fact that the film takes place in 1990 is an odd choice considering it is not based on a true story. Although it begins to make sense as the film is clearly inspired by some late 80s, early 90s crime dramas.

The film’s opening replicates the famous “American Girl” sequence from “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) which entails a young woman singing along to a song on the radio before getting stalked by a killer and murdered.

Once the scene ended, there was hope that the film would simply have paid homage to these films instead of trying to rehash them. However, until the final 10 minutes, it is just that. A rehash.

That is not to say that the film is bad. After all, it offers good direction by Hancock in the ways in which he moves his camera, along with good performances, particularly from Washington and Leto.

The script is also well-written in its use of “show don’t tell” where there are many revealing and intense scenes that do not utter a word. Such as a female jogger turning a corner before being followed by a car and then dissolving to the next day. The audience sees all they need to see.

It is the overarching story that does not seem to offer anything new.

“Seven” (1995) is clearly the film’s biggest inspiration as it feels almost like a remake of the film.

This can be observed as the film’s lead, Joe Deacon, (Washington) a former detective who has relocated to a smaller county outside of the city gets drawn back into a complicated case he vows to solve. Very similar to Morgan Freeman’s character in “Seven,” who is about to retire before being drawn into one last case.

There is also a scene in which the lonely lead detective has a meal at his partner’s house, meets his family and they all get along well. The same scene takes place in “Seven.”

However, the film’s biggest replication of “Seven” is in the finale in which Jim Baxter (Malek) travels with who he believes to be the killer, (Leto) to a remote, desert-like location where the killer says he has hidden the bodies.

The same sequence takes place in “Seven” with Kevin Spacey as the killer in that respective film, and while Jared Leto is in the film more than Spacey was in his film, he still feels underused.

The film plays out just like “Seven” with the killer getting into the detective’s head and without spoilers, the desert sequence ends and the final 10 minutes of the film revolve around the film’s central theme that is hinted at early on when Joe begins to work on the case.

The theme of “The Little Things” is not detectives haunted by unsolved cases, it is detectives haunted by mistakes they’ve made in trying to solve these cases. Some of them, even deadly.

This theme is showcased early on when Joe is looking at autopsy photos of victims and then is visited in his hotel room by the women and physically haunted.

The film resolves this theme well with its ending, although it is a shame that the rest of the runtime could not have explored it further and instead, spends its time in all ready familiar territory.

“The Little Things” is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.