Movie Breakdown: The Little Things (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Denzel Washington is, even after years of iffy choices, still probably my favorite movie star. Rami Malek continues to be the best part of shitty movies. So yeah, even if Warner Brothers dumped this into the January doldrums, it still might be okay.
Post-Screening Ramble:
The Little Things is the type of film where two tough guy protagonists (in this case Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as detectives) mutter a line of dialogue intended to sound hard and then try to sell the line-reading by staring pensively at each other. It’s a film that draws so heavily on what came before it (i.e. anything David Fincher has made regarding murder and every hard-boiled cop novel ever written) that it never really establishes its own identity. Which, with two leads as enjoyable to watch mug as Washington and Malek, well, it isn’t entirely unenjoyable. Washington plays Joe Deacon, a big city homicide detective turned small town sheriff who’s drawn back on to the murder beat. Malek is the fresh-faced cop who hasn’t seen the full darkness at the edges just yet. Again, this is a lukewarm rehash of Seven with less visual style and a story that doesn’t hold nearly as many surprises, but director/writer John Lee Hancock manages to build a decent enough flick around the evils of men, and how you can end up carrying them on your shoulders for a lifetime. Washington and Malek saunter through the simmering unoriginality of The Little Things like the great actors they are and the movie, at its best, is just entertaining enough, just smart enough to almost be worth your time. The movie will open on HBO Max this Friday, January 29.
One Last Thing:
Jared Leto is super creepy in this film. I’m of the opinion that Leto is a one-trick pony, but he adds some layers to the trick this go around and I was surprisingly impressed by his performance.
Another Last Thing:
There’s an upbeat snippet of strings that keep popping up in The Little Things that was so inappropriate. There’d be these moments of violence or sadness and the music makes it seem like you’re staring dreamily off into a sunset.
