The Little Things (2021) Review

 "It's the little things that get you caught."
-Joe Deacon


Former Los Angeles detective, Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) returns to the city and get wrapped up in a series of murders that remind him of an old case that haunts him.  He teams up with hot-shot detective Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek) and they go after their number 1 suspect, Albert Sparma (Jared Leto).


What Works:  

I'll be honest, very little about this movie works.  There is a few moments with interesting cinematography and lighting, with the best example being with Washington looking at himself in a bathroom mirror.  The final scene of the movie is also an interesting reveal and is one of the few character moments to make any sense.  That's it.


What Sucks:

Right off the bat, this movie feels like a rip-off of Se7en that was written by an alien who only saw Se7en once and fell asleep through part of it.  Everything this movie does, Se7en does a million times better.  I've seen plenty of good serial killer movies that take cues from Se7en and this is not one of them.

I was excited for this movie because it has a great cast, but none of them work out well in their roles.  Leto tries way too hard to be the inscrutable suspect.  It makes his performance as the Joker seem super subtle.  Washington and Malek try, but it's seems like they weren't sure what to do with their characters.  I think the fault lies with the director, not them.

The editing of the film is just wonky.  There are some weird cuts in the middle of the action and characters arriving at new locations to see characters we saw in the last scene already there.  The spatial editing is some of the worst I've seen in a big budget movie.  At points, it almost feels like there are scenes missing from the movie.

The writing is a disaster.  We are given a ton of exposition really fast.  The movie gives us no time to process anything and still expects us to keep up.  I was having a really hard time figuring out the relationships between characters.  When the movie is not being confusing, it's just a giant cliché with dialogue we've heard a million times before.

Finally, the characters make incredibly stupid decisions.  Almost all of the conflict in the film could have been prevented if the characters had been even slightly intelligent.  It was actually insulting how stupid they were at times.


Verdict:

The Little Things is a piss-poor ripoff of Se7en with some decent lighting and cinematography.  The characters are dumb, the writing and editing are terrible, and almost nothing about this movie works.

 2/10: Awful 

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