What the Hell Is Denzel Washington Doing in This Bloody Mess?
The ghost of Seven lives on with The Little Things, as does Denzel Washington’s search for the type of great serial killer thriller he missed out on when he turned down the lead role in David Fincher’s 1995 genre classic. John Lee Hancock’s film (premiering Jan. 29 in theaters, as well as on HBO Max for its first month) is deeply indebted in both style and plot particulars to that predecessor, although unfortunately for it—and its headliner—its modest suspense is largely offset by the fact that there’s nothing substantial or especially original lurking beneath its eerie exterior.
Once again attending to the serial-killer itch he repeatedly scratched in the second half of the ‘90s with Virtuosity, Fallen, and The Bone Collector, Washington stars as Joe “Deke” Deacon, a deputy sheriff working and living in rural Kern County, California. Deke is a lonely divorcee who hasn’t seen his kids in forever, listens to classic love songs, and spends his days tending to petty crimes in his sleepy jurisdiction. That all changes when he’s sent to retrieve a piece of evidence from Los Angeles, which it turns out is his old stomping ground. In drips and drabs, The Little Things reveals that Deke was a superstar homicide detective in the big city, but left under somewhat infamous (if also semi-enigmatic) circumstances. Now back in town, he’s greeted with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. His appearance also piques the curiosity of new celebrity detective Jim “Jimmy” Baxter (Rami Malek), who’s presently trying to solve a series of related slayings.
It’s not long before Jimmy is asking Deke to accompany him to his latest crime scene to lend a helping hand, thereby setting up a young white hotshot/older Black vet dynamic straight out of Seven, whose aesthetics are then mimicked when the duo arrive at the bloodbath in question and find that the power’s been cut, thus forcing them to navigate the interior space via flashlight. The film seems to be aware that it’s following in Fincher’s footsteps—its story is even set in the 1990s—but it doesn’t really care that it’s treading well-worn ground, nor does it show much interest in putting a new spin on its chosen template. Instead, it merely soldiers onward into familiar territory, with Deke choosing to use his vacation time to aid Jimmy’s investigation of a fiend who likes to hunt single women, bind, gag and execute them, and then pose their bodies in suggestive ways.