THE LITTLE THINGS
Big stars, big themes, big scale. Medium-sized review.
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Amorally complex, ’90s-set LA story that takes place mostly in night-time gloom, John Lee Hancock’s (The Blind Side) serial-killer thriller is an unsettling tale of murder, obsession and how the past can haunt you. Denzel Washington is Sheriff Joe Deacon, a top cop who left the LA beat for the quieter life in Bakersfield (for reasons that won’t be spoiled here). When his boss sends him to the big city to collect some evidence for a case, he gets sucked back into an “all hands on deck” search for a killer who’s been indiscriminately murdering young women.
The intrigue begins when all evidence points to Jared Leto’s loner Albert Sparma as the murderer. As Deacon and Rami Malek’s increasingly fixated detective Jim Baxter attempt to nail him, lines become blurred and ethics are ignored. Sparma, meanwhile, seemingly gets off on playing ‘catch me if you can’ with the cops.
One of Hancock’s smartest moves is keeping the violence largely off screen; it’s the aftermath we’re left with. What
really resonates, though, is the acting on display. Washington and Malek are both great, but Leto is on utterly mesmerising form here. From those eerie brown contacts in his eyes to a walk that feels almost Frankenstein-like, it’s a true transformation that’ll send shivers your way. Add in grungy, noir-y lensing from DoP John Schwartzman and the score by Thomas Newman, and The Little Things has all the ingredients of a first-rate twisted tale. James Mottram