I’ve said this before, but the sign of a great actor is not that you can be amazing in an amazing movie. That’s encouraged yes, but it’s not the best measure. A better measure is if your talents can take a pretty mediocre to bad movie and make it watchable and interesting. Part of me thinks John Lee Hancock knows this script is something better served on a multi-episode arc of Chicago PD or NCIS. But to get that sweet HBO Max Money, he convinced Warner Studios to hire 3 Oscar winners to cover up the The Little Things’s shortcomings like olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette and parmesan cheese do to an old piece of bread.
Deke (Denzel, the olive oil base, silky smooth) appears to be your run of the mill small town officer, going through the motions of his life and probably counting down days to retirement. His boss sends him to Los Angeles to deliver evidence for a case. Stuck there for a day or two, Deke draws the attention of Jim Baxter (Rami Malek, the parmesan cheese, good in small doses, grating when overused), the force’s star detective investigating a serial killer. Baxter then involves Deke more and more into the investigation, helping diagnose crime scenes, bodies and interview potential suspects like Albert Sparma (Jared Leto, overwhelming us with intensity like balsamic vinaigrette).
Let’s face facts. When you cast 3 Oscar winners, if you’re the director, you just let them cook and work the story around what they want to do. Thankfully, John Lee Hancock let’s his start do their magic. This isn’t magnetic force Denzel Washington in The Little Things. We’re getting a more subdued guy this time: a broken purposeless man who slowly unburies decades of regret with this new investigation. The amazing part of Denzel’s performance is even though he’s an underling in the police hierarchy, he carries himself like he should be at the top; that charisma can’t help but rub off on Rami Malek’s Baxter. Matching Denzel’s charisma with a more showy performance is Jared Leto. His Sparma is Denzel’s equal and opposite, using a quiet unease permeating his every pore which draws out the worst in everyone. The interrogations between Leto and Washington are the film’s highlight: you simply can’t take your eyes off the pair. Rami Malek is forced into the Chris Bosh role on the 2010’s Miami Heat, since his character is meant to be impressionable/reactionary. Malek’s mileage varies per person: this movie sees his story as the emotional lynchpin, so he gets more screentime than I think he earns. But Malek is always paired with either Denzel or JL, so either way you’ll find yourself glued to the screen to see the Oscar talent on display.
The Little Things tries to match their casting with a story worthy of the acting talent, but the other parts of the movie need a few more revisions to get rid of some of the issues. There are some spikes of greatness here and there. The opening scene sets the stage for what type of Los Angeles we are getting: in this case, the seedy cruel underbelly. The set design is awash in bleak darkness, greens and such to drench the characters in a world weariness that fits the story quite nicely. The plotting is by far the weakest element: I don’t think this movie understands what a high profile police investigation in Los Angeles is supposed to look like in terms of pressure and scrutiny on the characters. As such, a lot of the motivation for certain character’s behaviors make little to no sense and jarringly take you of the movie often enough that you’re not as invested as you should be. And the movie leaves a lot of hanging sublots underexplored that would have made the story much more interesting. And without spoilers, the ending tries to be important, but will leave you feeling pretty gross instead.
If you want a better version of The Little Things, consider watching Se7en or Korea’s Burning. The triple Oscar winner vehicle is instead just a vehicle for those winners to do some flexing and paint their sheen over a screenplay that needs a rewrite or two. Though this movie does give me hope that Denzel, in his later years, can play a private eye and master interrogator who just intimidates the hell out of new witnesses in every episode of his TV show. Will he ever do that? I don’t know, but I’ll keep my eye on the little things to see if he gives us any hints.