The Little Things | Little White Lies

The Lit­tle Things

02 Feb 2021

Two men, one in a police uniform and one in a suit, standing near a police cordon tape.
Two men, one in a police uniform and one in a suit, standing near a police cordon tape.
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Anticipation.

When is Denzel ever not worth a watch?

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Enjoyment.

We miss mid-budget movies like this.

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In Retrospect.

Familiar and inessential, but still, they really don’t make them like this anymore.

Den­zel Wash­ing­ton and Rami Malek play LA cops bat­tling their demons while try­ing to catch a killer.

This slow-burn ser­i­al killer thriller was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by direc­tor John Lee Han­cock in 1990 – the same year the film takes place – and it plays like the throw­back it is. Mid-bud­get crime movies of this ilk were fash­ion­able 20 or 30 years ago, but now, even at a time when stream­ing plat­forms are sat­u­rat­ed with true crime sto­ries, The Lit­tle Things feels almost novel.

Den­zel Wash­ing­ton plays Joe Deke” Dea­con, a for­mer detec­tive who rel­e­gates him­self to a qui­eter patrol job, roam­ing the high­ways of sun-kissed Kern Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia, aid­ing din­er own­ers in van­dal­ism cas­es. Dea­con imme­di­ate­ly comes off as some­one reserved, guard­ed and cal­cu­lat­ed, with a strong intu­ition that all great detec­tives have.

When bod­ies begin to pile up, Dea­con makes a return to his old head­quar­ters to find Rami Malek’s lead detec­tive Jim Bax­ter head­ing up the case. Dea­con is imme­di­ate­ly sus­pi­cious of Baxter’s abil­i­ty to go after the killer, while Bax­ter is extreme­ly reluc­tant to give him the time of day. The gen­er­a­tional gap and ten­sion between them is con­firmed by Deacon’s for­mer part­ner, played by Chris Bauer, who tells him, These young kids don’t have a soul any­more, no one wants to come have a beer with me.”

Mean­while, Deacon’s for­mer boss (Ter­ry Kin­ney) warns him about get­ting involved as the film hints at our protagonist’s dark past on the force. The two for­mer col­leagues know what haunts Dea­con but they also know he’s prob­a­bly the only one who can solve the case.

A man with long hair and a beard wearing a grey jacket stands on a balcony.

It’s only when Jared Leto enters the fray that the film final­ly finds its rhythm. As sus­pect­ed killer Albert Spar­ma, Leto injects some much-need­ed light­ness into pro­ceed­ings, all greasy hair and twist­ed campi­ness. He con­fess­es his love for true crime shows and calls Bax­ter and Dea­con butt bud­dies”, ask­ing if they want to grab a drink. The added ten­sion he cre­ates between them is the film’s strongest attribute; pre­vi­ous­ly at odds, they are forced to lean on and learn from one another.

Wash­ing­ton and Malek share a fas­ci­nat­ing dynam­ic in the lat­ter half of the film. Both play detec­tives who bring their work home, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Dea­con, it is revealed lat­er on, has two daugh­ters and an ex-wife, nei­ther of whom we see. He sits alone in his apart­ment and sur­rounds him­self with pic­tures of the vic­tims of the cas­es he couldn’t solve, and sees their ghosts through­out the film.

At one point Bax­ter screams at him, This isn’t okay, you need help!” Dea­con works for him­self and is not nec­es­sar­i­ly guid­ed by a moral code or sense of duty to the job. Bax­ter on the oth­er hand is still a fam­i­ly man. He does the job it because it’s the right thing to do, and still has peo­ple he wish­es to pro­tect. They both want jus­tice – Bax­ter for the good of oth­ers and Dea­con for himself.

This slow and patient char­ac­ter-dri­ven approach by Han­cock is refresh­ing. The film is not so much about the motives of the killer as it is about the lives of two very dif­fer­ent men, and we learn a great deal about them and where they come from. By the end, the evi­dence gath­er­ing feels moot. Stake­outs and sly attempts by Bax­ter and Dea­con to set up Scam­pa fail. The dark inevitabil­i­ty that he will get away with mur­der starts to become evi­dent and looms large over both detec­tives, dri­ving the film to its grim endpoint.

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