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‘The Little Things’ Review: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek Shine In This Neo-Noir Thriller
The Little Things, the new Denzel Washington movie opening simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max this Friday, opens with a scene that you’ve seen a thousand times before. A young girl is driving alone at night in the middle of nowhere. Another car starts tailing her, harassing her, and chasing her. She pulls over at a gas station, screaming for help. The doors are locked. No one is there. If you’ve read the movie synopsis—that Washington and Rami Malek are cops hunting down a serial killer—you’re almost sure of what’s about to happen. But then it doesn’t. Instead of a gruesome, off-screen murder, the girl flags down a truck driver and the scene ends. It’s refreshingly unexpected, but it’s also confusing. You don’t immediately learn what happened to her, nor is it clear how she fits into the story until much later. That pretty much sums up the vibe of The Little Things: an unexpected take on the crime thriller genre, but one that gets a tad muddled along the way.
WATCH GUIDE: The Little Things
Our story is set in Los Angeles in 1990, a time when plot-hole-creating devices like cell phones and DNA testing didn’t exist. Washington stars as Joe “Deke” Deacon, a local Kern County deputy sheriff who gets called upon to pick up some evidence from the Los Angeles Police Department. Deacon has a reputation in the area, and we later learn it’s because he became consumed by a serial killer case that ruined his health, his marriage, and his career. For mumbo-jumbo cop jargon reasons, Deacon has to stay in Los Angeles an extra night. That’s all the time he needs to get sucked into a new serial killer case, led by detective Jimmy Baxter (Malek). It’s not entirely clear why Baxter invites Deacon to accompany him to the crime scene of a serial killer victim—a murder date, if you will—but he does. After that, Deacon is all in. He cashes in on his vacation days and stays in LA to help Baxter solve the case. Eventually, they narrow down their suspects to an odd man named Albert (Jared Leto). Both Deacon and Baxter have a gut feeling about Albert. Now they just need evidence.
