The Little Things is a crime thriller directed by John Lee Hancock and stars Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto. The film follows two police detectives investigating a series of gruesome crimes and are stalked by their prime suspect, a very unusual mysterious man.
I’ve always loved a good crime thriller. From Se7en to Zodiac to Gone Girl, I find the genre absolutely fascinating. Even when it’s a mediocre film, I can find some things to enjoy.
First things first, the performances were one of the reasons I wanted to watch this movie. Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto are among my favorites. Denzel is one of the world’s greatest actors, up there with Brando, Stewart, Newman, Nicholson, Day-Lewis, you name it. I’d watch Rami Malek in a 2 and 1/2 hour movie of him watching paint dry. While they are really good with what the average script gave them to do, the stand out is Jared Leto. He’s so unbearably creepy, yet he’s got some of the few moments of levity. He gives everything he does this air of malace and uneasiness.
The cinematography and the music are really good if not slightly familiar to other thrillers.
The pacing is something for a thriller that needs to be crisp and perfect and any deviation can harm it. I hesitate to use the word slow but there were moments, even past the initial set up, where it felt like it needed a shot of adrenaline. When it got that, it didn’t feel very earned.
The overall tone was really unusual. At times it was a dark comedy, at times a gruesome thriller, at other times a neo-western. When there was moments of the comic relief, it seemed to immediately want you to ignore it. As I am a fan of thrillers of this nature, I was quick to notice tropes and clichés throught the story that are familiar to the genre. There were times where it felt like the movie thought it was more original than it was.
The Little Things is a well shot movie with amazing acting but poor execution beyond that. But all and all it is a decent installation in the crime thriller genre.
The Little Things gets a 3.5 out of 5.
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