A ’90s thriller comes of age
After three decades in limbo, serial-killer drama The Little Things finally finds relevance, and a prestigious cast to boot
WHEN JOHN HANCOCK wrote the script for The Little Things back in 1993, it was a contemporary neo-noir thriller. In the following two decades, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Warren Beatty and Danny Devito all expressed an interest in directing it, before Hancock — now an experienced director with the likes of The Blind Side (2009) and Saving Mr. Banks (2013) — decided to do it himself. It finally emerges this year as a period piece, a deliberate throwback that sees Denzel Washington and Rami Malek’s mismatched cops searching for a serial killer. “There were conversations about whether to make it a modern-day story,” says Hancock. “But I wanted to show a landscape that existed back then: Hollywood was a lot tougher.”
Originally the story was born out of a frustration with the standard ’80s cop thrillers, the way that two acts of steadily unravelling clues would give way to a chase and a gun fight. “I always thought that was less satisfying than the first two-thirds of the movie, so I wanted to write something that had genre elements but wasn’t really a genre film. But then you have to make sure that how it plays out is equally or more satisfying.”
Hancock also thought it was important to strip away the technology of modern life to create unease and gnawing tension — echoing other ’90s serial-killer classics like Seven or The Silence Of The Lambs. “I really liked the idea of these two cops on this really dark quest together, and I wanted to just make it tougher on them. No cell phones! Also, it’s pre-dna, which makes it harder to solve a case. There’s something about that period that just felt right.”
As the film moved towards production, Hancock landed three Oscar-winners as his leading men — as well as Washington and Malek, Jared Leto signed up to play one of their suspects. Even the brutal policing that fuelled headlines last year only makes this morally murky tale look more relevant. “We all have different lenses that we’re looking through now. It’s certainly not a hero cop movie.” It may have taken nearly 30 years, but The Little Things’ time has finally come.