I was looking forward to this new mystery thriller by Warner Bros; the trailer intrigued me. I’m someone who’s a sucker for an interesting crime thriller, especially if there are twists involved. Unfortunately, in the case of The Little Things there just isn’t a lot of meat on the bone. When you sit down to watch a thriller you want to be on edge and heavily invested in the trajectory of the story, but that doesn’t happen here. The cast is very talented and they all do their best but actors can only do so much to lift up a film when the script isn’t up to par.
Denzel Washington is undoubtedly talented, he’s proven that over the years with his impressive performances in various films. Washington does his best with the lead role here, to be honest though this isn’t anything from him we haven’t seen before. I’m not knocking his performance but I do think Denzel needs to try his hand at a different type of character. We’ve seen him play the somewhat tortured good guy a lot and I’d like to see something else from him.
Rami Malek plays Denzel’s main co-star here and he does fine with his material, although at times I did think he was too stoic. Malek is a good actor and he has good scenes in this but sometimes he’s just too stern. Last but not least is Jared Leto who plays a creepy suspect in the case they’re trying to solve. Leto is someone I’ve loved in past films, his great ability to play unstable characters serves him well in The Little Things. His performance is unsettling and he handles what he’s given well. The cast and their abilities is not at all the problem this film is plagued with, I’m afraid that problem is the script.
The big glaring issue with this script is that it drags things out unnecessarily and it gets tedious. They take their time setting things up and it takes a good while before anything interesting actually takes place. Now there are films that are slow burns that work because they have great pay offs, but that great pay off that happens in other films like this never happens here. If you’re going to follow a long slow route then you better have a reason for doing so and there better be a decent pay off waiting at the end of the road.
The Little Things wants to be about something intriguing and it wants to be creepy and thrilling, but it’s just not. The “pay off” that comes at the end of the film isn’t that interesting or thrilling, it’s something that can be fairly easily guessed and it has little to do with the actual case they are trying so hard to solve. They pull the old bait and switch, you’d think this film was all about figuring out who the killer is, but it’s actually about something else, and that something isn’t nearly as interesting.
There were several times in which I checked my phone to see how long I’d been watching just because nothing of much interest was occurring onscreen. The build up is pretty damn boring too, I kept wanting things to spice up and they just never really do. The trailer takes the best aspects of this film and compiles them to make it seem chilling, but it’s false advertising. I’ve definitely seen a whole lot worse, this isn’t an awful film, but it’s not good either. This is one that will forgotten relatively soon because there just isn’t much about it that’s worthy of remembering.
The Little Things features some nice performances and the ending presents something somewhat interesting but the dry slow nature of the overall story ultimately makes this unworthy of a recommendation. Better luck next time to this talented cast!
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