The Little Things: Movie Review

The Little Things is this month's HBO Max/WB release, a crime drama starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto. Overall this was a bit of a disappointment for me, definitely not all bad but left a lot to be desired. With a cast like this you would think that there would be some real potential here but in my opinion it fell short and here is why:

The Bad

Frankly, the plot is nothing special here; it is a detective story that we have seen more times than you could count. Old fashioned cop has to work with a new up and comer to solve a terrible case with some history behind it..that’s really the basic premise of it and there's not much else to speak on after that. This is not an immediate killer for a movie obviously if the execution is done well it can still work but for much of this movie it’s very mediocre. The movie just kind of happens and has a few moments of tension but the build is not even worth the payoff. Also, the performances are not bad, however there is nothing special about them unfortunately. Rami and Denzel give fine and decent efforts but they have both given much better performances in the past. Leto gives the most captivating performance out of them all but that is probably because he has the most interesting character. I’m not blaming the actors here, they did fine, it just seemed like they did not have much to go on from this script. Lastly, the movie thinks it is being smarter than it really is and the ending seems like it is ramping up to something great and then just falls flat but I’ll get into that in spoilers.

The Good

This movie is not all bad though and there is some enjoyment to be had here, the opening scene is great, very tense, terrifying and really sets the tone. Also, the score is very good, it had a spooky tense tone which was used throughout the movie very effectively. Another positive of the movie was any scene that had either of Washington or Malek interacting with Leto or all three of them together. Those were always fun and usually tense watching it unfold, unfortunately though, these scenes were much better than the others which really just magnified the rest of the films shortcomings.

Spoilers!!

Spoiler warning for the next part I’m going to go into the ending so if you do not want to know what happens do not read on just go to the final thoughts section which will be spoiler free again. So the big twist reveal ending is that Rami ends up killing Leto but we never find out if Leto is the actual killer they were looking for or was he just an innocent creep. While at first this sounds interesting and it really could be I felt like it fell short of what they were shooting for. Mostly because there really is not anyone else in the movie that it possibly could be so we the audience pretty much are 100% sure Leto’s character was the killer so the ambiguity is not impactful. I even looked online, maybe I was missing something like maybe there was some other hints to someone else being the real killer and the best thing I saw was someone we met for one scene and who is also dead now anyway. I believe it would’ve been more effective if we had some more doubts about if Leto’s character was guilty or not without this the act of him being murdered just feels justified so it’s not so much a big deal.

Final Thoughts

In the end I found this to be an okay movie with a great cast but forgettable execution. Disappointing as well, a cast like this had my hopes up for something like Se7en but this was nowhere near that. To wrap things up here, I give The Little Things a C grade, just right in the middle nothing offensive but nothing special either.

Written By: Sean Oneill

February 1st, 2021