“The Little Things” Review
“The Little Things” premiered on HBO on Friday, Jan. 28 as one of Warner Brothers’ movies slated for release on HBO Max in 2021. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto, “The Little Things” is a film about two gritty detectives who are tracking the murder of young women with little evidence.
“The Little Things” was acted and shot well but really failed to deliver an entertaining story that keeps its viewers engaged. Little to no drama occurred throughout most of the film, and the disappointing ending fails to make up for it. The ending of the film felt unimportant and resolved none of the details or mystery that we saw on screen.
The movie is incredibly slow and is all a setup for an uneventful and disappointing ending. As the movie goes on, viewers are looking forward to the movie ending, not the ending of the movie.
Another problem with the film, besides its pacing, is its lack of relevant details. Hancock gives us flashbacks from when Washington’s character was working a prior case, but the flashbacks add nothing to the plot aside from a little bit of character development for Washington. And by the end of the movie, those flashback scenes are rendered useless. The flashbacks correlate with the climax of the film, but they really only show the audience that Washington’s character had a tragic story, which we already knew prior to that.
Another use of totally irrelevant details is with the character Tina, played by Sofia Vassilieva. The young female character is the first character we meet, and she serves as a witness who can identify the murderer because she escaped from him. But her character does absolutely nothing to convict anybody or even help out the detectives, and by the end of the movie, viewers will even forget about her. She was the only character who could identify the killer—why doesn’t she have a more important role?
On the flip side, the one good thing about “The Little Things” is the acting from Washington, Malek and Leto. Leto’s character is incredibly creepy and works really well with Washington and Malek, and Malek and Washington have decent chemistry between themselves on screen, as they portray the two detectives on the case.
All in all, “The Little Things” is an uneventful film that does not live up to the hype that was surrounding it. When viewers see a cast as talented as this, all they can hope for is that the writers and directors hit their mark. But in the case of “The Little Things,” Hancock completely missed his mark, and Washington, Malek and Leto will have this below-average film attached to their legacy forever.
Rating: 2/5
Sam Roberts is a junior majoring in telecommunications. To contact him, email sam.robertspsu00@gmail.com.
