A remark during the first scene in ‘The Little Things’ – an effective cold opening, full of danger and suspense – indicates that it is 1990. At first I thought it would mean that the action would continue rapidly to this day, but instead the film, set mainly in Los Angeles, comes in a fairly generic version of the semi-recent past, which sometimes flashes back to a few years before.
There are not many historical details or flowering periods that would justify this choice. It mostly seems like a pretext for removing cell phones, internet searches, GPS tracking and other modern conveniences that can destroy the analog atmosphere needed for an old-fashioned serial killer. Which is fair enough. When it comes to haunting neo-noir resonance, it’s hard to beat a lazy pay phone in an empty night street or an envelope full of Polaroids.
‘The Little Things’ was written and directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Denzel Washington as a weary professional with a keen instinct and a battered conscience. This is an unapologetic setback. It breeds over the psychologically and mentally damaging consequences of policing as the two chief detectives (Rami Malek along with Washington) pursue an elusive, malicious killer of women. You can think of “Se7en” or “Zodiac” or a lost season of “True Detective”, although this movie is less self-styled than any of the movies.
And that’s partly because “The Little Things” is both a latecomer and a forerunner. (Time is a flat circle, do not know.) Hancock wrote the screenplay almost 30 years ago and in the 1990s Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood were possible. Hancock wrote the lyrics for two Eastwood films in that decade, ‘A Perfect World’ and ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’. More recently he released ‘The Blind Side’, ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ and ‘The Highwaymen’ led.
At their best, these films are skilled rather than groundbreaking – admirable in their solid commitment to the production of works of art, even if their stories stubbornly cling to the convention. This one rises to a slightly higher level, though it does not completely avoid the clichés of the genre: “You know, you and I have a lot in common,” a suspect told one of the detectives. That the seemingly bad guy is played by Jared Leto does not necessarily help.
But Leto, as a self-confessed ‘crime lover’ with an awfully calm attitude, is not bad. Malek as Jim Baxter, an avid and ambitious Los Angeles detective who flirts with careers and personal disaster, is also pretty good. But who are we kidding? This movie is a coat that has been hanging in the closet for decades, waiting for Washington to put it on.
Not that the man’s actual clothes fit. It is part of the texture of the performance. Joe Deacon, commonly referred to as Deke, begins the film as a sheriff’s deputy in a dusty part of the Central Valley in California. The khaki uniform does him no favors, and Deke carries himself like a man bending under a long-carrying burden – round his shoulders, thick in the middle, slow and heavy in his step.
You have the feeling that this was not always the case. You have that sense, in part because you’ve seen Denzel Washington in these kinds of roles before, but the big ones can play endless variations on the same theme. When Deke drives to Los Angeles on some irrelevant police business, we learn that he was once an LAPD assassin. He receives mixed reception. The captain (Terry Kinney) can barely look at him. Deke’s former partner (Chris Bauer) and the medical examiner (Michael Hyatt) greet him warmly, but their kindness is complemented by pity and disappointment.
Deke is working with Baxter to track down a killer who preyed on young women, who may have been active when Deke was on the run. (The cop who’s apparently Jim’s real partner, played by Natalie Morales, does not have much to do.) The case takes some expected turns, and some are fewer, but because the clues and clues build up, the interest is of the film less in who did it than in what it does to the detectives. There is something that Eastwoodian delivers not only in Hancock’s clean, unpretentious direction, but also in the ethical universe he sketches. The line between good and evil is clear, but it does not forbid moral ambiguity or save the righteous from guilt. Nor does it guarantee justice.
It’s a heavy idea, and ‘The Little Things’ does not quite deserve its weight. Thanks to Hancock’s art and the discipline of the actors, it’s more than watchable, but you’ll probably not be haunted, disturbed, or even surprised. You have not seen it before. It feels just like that.
The little things
Graded R. Tortured souls and tortured bodies. Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max. Consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines before watching movies in theaters.