THE LITTLE THINGS
Cert 15 ★★★
Available now on Premium VOD rental
Denzel Washington goes back to the 90s with an old-fashioned serial killer thriller.
Writer-director John Lee Hancock says he penned his first draft in 1993, two years after The Silence Of The Lambs sparked a craze for atmospheric crime flicks that blurred the line separating murderous psychos from obsessed detectives.
But it’s David Fincher’s Seven and Zodiac that weigh most heavily on Hancock’s very familiar effort. It’s nowhere near as good as either of them but Denzel keeps us watching with an engaging turn as the haunted cop.
He plays Joe “Deke” Deacon, a former hotshot LA detective shunted back into uniform after suffering a meltdown. But a chance meeting with his young replacement Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) sees him sucked back into the big league.
Baxter thinks Deke’s old-school know-how will succeed where modern methods have failed. A serial killer is on the loose and their prime suspect (Jared Leto) is of the slippery genius variety.
The first half of the film works pretty well as a gritty crime procedural, even if the chemistry only fitfully sparks between the two partners. Sadly, that gritty tone can’t survive the entrance of an overacting Leto who camps it up horribly as the sinister loner.
Fair play to Hancock for trying to shake things up in his formula-smashing finale.
But the unsatisfying ending just highlights why the formula worked so well in the first place.