DECENT BUT DATED, JUST LIKE DENZEL
ALSO SHOWING
A VETERAN, seen-it-all, out-of-town cop, haunted by memories of a long-ago unsolved case that effectively wrecked his career, teams up with a shiny young college-boy cop when a serial killer reemerges in Los Angeles — only for the younger guy to get an emotional clobbering, too.
If that sounds like a dated premise, it’s because it is; writer-director John Lee Hancock had the original idea in 1993.
The Little Things (★★★II) seems like a throwback on screen, as well as on paper. But with Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as the two crimebusters, and Jared Leto as their seedy chief suspect, the retro feel doesn’t stop a moody psychological thriller from exerting a grip. It’s not without flaws: are there really uniformed cops in the U.S. as old as Washington (who turns 67 this year)? But it’s slick, atmospheric, nicely acted and beautifully shot.
Cherry (★★III) offers another cocktail of crime and mental health, as a disturbed former U.S. soldier (Tom Holland) becomes a bank robber to fund his drug addiction. The film is directed by the Russo brothers, who have worked with Holland in the Avengers films, but this is a much less successful collaboration, not least because the protagonist does a ‘Goodfellas’ by narrating his own life story. Here, through no particular fault of Holland’s, it becomes very wearing very quickly.
So does Yes Day (★★III), which is a shame, because we could all do with a decent family comedy. But this is mostly a saccharine and inane mess, in which an all-American mom (Jennifer Garner) is goaded into reforming her children’s view of her as a fun-wrecking tyrant by granting them 24 hours in which she and her husband (a floundering Edgar Ramirez) will answer affirmatively to all their demands. The British sitcom Outnumbered covered similar territory with infinitely more wit. Yes Day, by contrast, is a definite no-no.
■ THE Little Things is available on most digital platforms. Cherry is on Apple TV+; Yes Day is on Netflix.