“The Little Things” is a movie written and directed by John Lee Hancock. It is star-studded with Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto in leading roles. Hancock has notable films such as The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks. This movie follows two detectives Deke and Baxter, played by Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, as they search for a serial killer. This review contains spoilers for this film and The Dark Knight.

This movie had slight tension but not enough to carry the number of long-drawn-out scenes in it. The biggest issue is we don’t care about the characters. Detective Baxter and Deke follow the main suspect, played by Leto, throughout the movie. This eventually leads to a scene in which Detective Baxter kills him in an act of anger. Now, this scene is supposed to make us feel bad because he is the chief and the town looks up to him and he also has a family. Except we get one scene of him talking to the press. We also get a scene where we meet his family and we see his wife and daughter except Baxter is acting as if he is on another planet. We should have gotten scenes of how the city he protects looks up to him and how his family and he have chemistry.

This movie reminds me of The Dark Knight. It is a Batman movie but we see a politician who is looked highly upon by the city turn into a villain. The reason his turn is effective in provoking emotion is that we see a build-up and care about his character. We see how he is in love. We see how the city depends on him. Batman respects him. He actually does good things throughout the film and is seen as an essential character in this story. His turning point is also good because there is build-up. He loses his girlfriend and believes his best friend has died. On top of that, he becomes badly disfigured.

Detective Baxter kills the suspect because he talked about his family in a slightly threatening way.

The performances were alright but this movie didn’t do much for me overall. I don’t recommend seeing this. 

(This is now showing in theaters and HBO Max)