The Little Things was directed by John Lee Hancock, starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto et al.
I watched this on HBO Max and I actually watched it to the end, because I enjoyed the only other film I’ve seen by this director, The Founder (2016).
What a contrast. The writing on The Little Things is very, very weak, and now I see that while John Lee Hancock both directed and wrote it, he only directed The Founder (written by Robert Siegel).
The problem is that it’s a stack of cliches. Horrible dialogue, like something a child would write, imitating hard-boiled standard exchanges we’ve all seen in D-grade movies. The setups are all by the numbers, supposed rivalries, the misunderstood detective run out of town blah, blah, blah just dreadful.
It was long too, over two hours and all to no point. Now, the direction was mediocre at best, although not horrible. It’s long, but the scenes themselves weren’t necessarily long - a few were, by like 10% or so - which is something, considering how often directors have no feel for the weight of the scene and you get stuff that drags on and on too long by 30, 50, 150%, scenes that just cannot justify their length. Here the story is just too jumbled and pointless and goes on with no tension and no investment from the audience.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT!!!
———————————————————————————
You don’t care about finding the “killer”, so uninvolving is it. The opening pretty much reflects the pointlessness of the movie - you have a chase scene where the victim runs and it ends ambiguously, and we promptly forget it. We. Don’t. Care. The director has not made us care at all.
Then there’s the acting. I am always saying how we live in a golden age for actors, despite generally abysmal directing talent. Unfortunately this film has no good acting in it. The acting is uniformly poor.
Denzel Washington can be a competent actor - I’m not a gigantic fan, and I’ve always thought he was overhyped; he struck me as a jumped up, puffed up guy who is essentially a weak guy trying to play tough - that’s the vibe I always got from him, like he was playing roles that were one class bigger than his psychic resources and depth. But he’s technically very competent and has an OK presence. Unfortunately, and this is partially the fault of the writing, he’s not giving a good performance here - very standard. Not terrible, but not elevating anything, just OKish.
And I guess he’s pushing 70, so that takes its toll, but the guy does not look good. He looks waterlogged. It’s as if his core liquified and he’s just a bag of boneless broth in a human skin. All definition is gone. Flabby and old looking. Perhaps he’s just looking his age, but the much older Samuel Jackson looks much sharper.
Rami Malek is disappointing and gives a poor performance. Nothing like his Bohemian Rhapsody performance - he’s just mugging listlessly. Yes, he was given idiotic lines to mouth, but he gives a performance with zero spark to it. He’s got a good face, but I guess that’s all he has here.
Jared Leto, what can I say, he’s just a rotten actor who has always been rotten and continues to be rotten in this film. Last I saw him in Blade Runner 2049, and he was a joke there, completely out of his depth. Here he gives a lazy overacting performance, like a 5th, or more accurately 50th rate Hannibal Lecter.
The rest of the actors don’t even raise a blip on the radar, completely forgettable the second they’re off the screen.
The directing, like I said, wasn’t horrific, but was definitely weak - all those animated corpses are a lame conceit and the direction doesn’t elevate any of this. I guess the LA environment was reasonably well done, is the best I can say here. In another win - I guess - the film is not actively offensive (to me), although the lazy trope of female victims with gallons of blood may be offensive to some (not graphically, as there isn’t *that* much of it, but conceptually). It just feels like a film that has no reason for existing, it brings us nothing. I stuck to the end just to see if there was some amazing ending/resolution that redeems this - instead, it ends even more pointlessly than the rest of the enterprise.
Mostly I wonder who greenlit this pile of doodoo. The script is terrible. What reason is there to push this forward? Another hollywood mystery.
In any case, I rate this 3.5 stars out of 10, and since I know how it ends, it’s a waste of time IMHO. YMMV.
I watched this on HBO Max and I actually watched it to the end, because I enjoyed the only other film I’ve seen by this director, The Founder (2016).
What a contrast. The writing on The Little Things is very, very weak, and now I see that while John Lee Hancock both directed and wrote it, he only directed The Founder (written by Robert Siegel).
The problem is that it’s a stack of cliches. Horrible dialogue, like something a child would write, imitating hard-boiled standard exchanges we’ve all seen in D-grade movies. The setups are all by the numbers, supposed rivalries, the misunderstood detective run out of town blah, blah, blah just dreadful.
It was long too, over two hours and all to no point. Now, the direction was mediocre at best, although not horrible. It’s long, but the scenes themselves weren’t necessarily long - a few were, by like 10% or so - which is something, considering how often directors have no feel for the weight of the scene and you get stuff that drags on and on too long by 30, 50, 150%, scenes that just cannot justify their length. Here the story is just too jumbled and pointless and goes on with no tension and no investment from the audience.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS ALERT!!!
———————————————————————————
You don’t care about finding the “killer”, so uninvolving is it. The opening pretty much reflects the pointlessness of the movie - you have a chase scene where the victim runs and it ends ambiguously, and we promptly forget it. We. Don’t. Care. The director has not made us care at all.
Then there’s the acting. I am always saying how we live in a golden age for actors, despite generally abysmal directing talent. Unfortunately this film has no good acting in it. The acting is uniformly poor.
Denzel Washington can be a competent actor - I’m not a gigantic fan, and I’ve always thought he was overhyped; he struck me as a jumped up, puffed up guy who is essentially a weak guy trying to play tough - that’s the vibe I always got from him, like he was playing roles that were one class bigger than his psychic resources and depth. But he’s technically very competent and has an OK presence. Unfortunately, and this is partially the fault of the writing, he’s not giving a good performance here - very standard. Not terrible, but not elevating anything, just OKish.
And I guess he’s pushing 70, so that takes its toll, but the guy does not look good. He looks waterlogged. It’s as if his core liquified and he’s just a bag of boneless broth in a human skin. All definition is gone. Flabby and old looking. Perhaps he’s just looking his age, but the much older Samuel Jackson looks much sharper.
Rami Malek is disappointing and gives a poor performance. Nothing like his Bohemian Rhapsody performance - he’s just mugging listlessly. Yes, he was given idiotic lines to mouth, but he gives a performance with zero spark to it. He’s got a good face, but I guess that’s all he has here.
Jared Leto, what can I say, he’s just a rotten actor who has always been rotten and continues to be rotten in this film. Last I saw him in Blade Runner 2049, and he was a joke there, completely out of his depth. Here he gives a lazy overacting performance, like a 5th, or more accurately 50th rate Hannibal Lecter.
The rest of the actors don’t even raise a blip on the radar, completely forgettable the second they’re off the screen.
The directing, like I said, wasn’t horrific, but was definitely weak - all those animated corpses are a lame conceit and the direction doesn’t elevate any of this. I guess the LA environment was reasonably well done, is the best I can say here. In another win - I guess - the film is not actively offensive (to me), although the lazy trope of female victims with gallons of blood may be offensive to some (not graphically, as there isn’t *that* much of it, but conceptually). It just feels like a film that has no reason for existing, it brings us nothing. I stuck to the end just to see if there was some amazing ending/resolution that redeems this - instead, it ends even more pointlessly than the rest of the enterprise.
Mostly I wonder who greenlit this pile of doodoo. The script is terrible. What reason is there to push this forward? Another hollywood mystery.
In any case, I rate this 3.5 stars out of 10, and since I know how it ends, it’s a waste of time IMHO. YMMV.