The Little Things (2020)

The Last Act Will Kill Ya

or

"When I see a sunrise or thunderstorm or dew on the ground, yes, I think there's a God. When I see all this, I think he's long past giving a shit."

"I just remember really liking crime dramas and psychological thrillers, but also feeling that especially some of the ones in the ’80s had become a little paint-by-numbers. I would like all the clues and the misdirects and the complications, and then you’d get to the third act where the bad guy is identified and the good guys give chase. And usually there’s some kind of action set piece, and then there’s a face-off and the good guy heroically defeats the bad guy.

And I thought, 'Why does the third act have to be less interesting than the first two?' So I wanted to see if I could have something that unravels in a way that is non-formulaic but also satisfying."

John Lee Hancock Interview with "The Wrap"

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: Black Lives Matter. The problems come when people think that white lives matter more than black lives (or brown lives or Asian lives or Tongan lives); that problem comes from a streak of meanness that runs through American society (or any society), especially when individuals are grouped into blocks and treated as statistics or rules of thumb or metrics—prejudices, all. People are not numbers or monolithic lumps; that's lazy thinking making the job easier for statisticians and bigots.

Alright. That's who I am, and I only say that because there's enough of a Big Stink on the internet about whether "it's an appropriate time" for there to be a controversial police drama. Forget that the participants are very respected actors of different ethnicities (if one has to notice such things). If people were waiting for "an appropriate time," things would never be made. The controversy is "Click-bait" sensitivity—all done to generate "hits" or "likes", just another kind of statistic— and it's sensitivity of the worst kind.

John Lee Hancock's new thriller, The Little Things, is a police drama about police trying to solving a cold case that has recently warmed up to the boiling point. The only blue is the thin blue line and the only red is the blood of the victims, washing over it. It is about police making mistakes while trying to do the right thing. And it is about the toll the job takes if you're a person of morals, having to deal with the public at the worst moments of their lives, invariably. It's hard for the moral compass to keep to true North if your impression is that Society is going South.

Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a Deputy ("I'm a Dep!") out in the scrubland of  Kern County, California, doing small-time calls that are basically nuisances. You'd never know he used to be a L.A. police detective with the highest resolve rate in the force. And he's more than a little reluctant to go back to his old hunting grounds to pick up some evidence that's being analyzed for them by the Big City Lab boys (and girls). It's a matter of Unfinished Business. Well, file it as a Cold Case. That business resulted in Deacon being suspended, getting divorced, and having a heart attack. Murder can kill you.

Going back is like a bad High School reunion. There's the cautious "you're back" responses, the pointed joshing...the side-eyes. People are glad to see you're alive...just not happy you're in close proximity. As for Deacon, he walks around like people are expecting him to have a case of cooties or something, but the old precinct still has the same feeling of a Boys Club that he no longer belongs to. Only there's a new kid in town. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) is lead detective for a serial murder case and he's sharp-suited, sharp-witted, and has enough control that a press conference is just another ritual. He knows Deacon, knows his record (as much as anybody official knows) and is sufficiently in command that having Deacon as another set of eyes might be handy. They can at least compare notes.

The crime scene looks like a ritual homicide: the victim was a hooker, slaughtered, posed. The two detectives go to their separate corners and go about their own particular business. Deacon discovers that there's an apartment across the way where it looks like somebody was watching everything when it was going down. Meeting up, Deacon and Baxter compare notes—Deacon thinks it has something to do with the case that got him suspended, the one he never solved. The M.O.'s certainly are similar in how the bodies have been purposely posed. That might be the end of it.

That is, if you believe in short movies. Baxter learns from his superior that Deacon hasn't gone back to Kern, that he actually has taken some sick days and is probably still in the area. He has. He is. And he's taken a crummy apartment, bought some used clothes and is living around the area where the last murder occurred. What they don't know is that he's not sleeping—the ghosts of the victims are keeping him awake. He's taken evidence shots from the crime files just to make sure.

Another murder happens. Another girl goes missing. Somebody's busy and the pressure is on lead Baxter to get answers. He turns to Deacon, who's been digging around, scouring for clues, and after harassing a peeping tom (and his subsequent suicide), they focus on Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a repairman working in the area. Sparma is straight out of creepsville (Leto gives him a wild-eyed glee, emaciated—but with a beer-gut—and the gait of an old man), staring at any police activity like he knows he's being watched and challenges it.

Deacon and Sparma conduct a little cat-and-mouse gamesmanship—both seeing themselves as the cat—when the dep' does some tailing of him on the freeway, only to find that Sparma is watching him with equal attention. The FBI is being called in to take over the investigation, and Deacon and Baxter decide to pull him in for questioning, at the same time that a woman who had previously been stalked on the highway comes in to report the incident, and, by now, the two detectives have a system down to question and observe in order to intimidate suspects.

But, Sparma is a cool customer. He knows the drill—and knows the potential for drilling—and he taunts and questions and goes against expectations. He just seems wrong. Rather than acting—or not acting—like a guilty party, he's blithe about the questioning, wanting to know more about procedure, and enjoying looking at the victims' forensics pictures. He's so nakedly transparent without admitting anything that the cops have nothing to go on. Just their instincts that Sparma is a "bad joe." But, that's not enough reason to arrest him and not enough to charge him. They can't crack him. So, they release him and start doubling down looking for evidence.

Along comes Act 3, which is where Hancock attempts to subvert the genre's "catch-'em-in-the-act"/chase/shoot-'em-up tropes. It is not entirely successful, unless you buy into that the triad of good-guys/bad-guys all think they're smarter than everybody else and so do things that an audience will think is just bad judgment. Everybody's a little too cocky, everybody thinks they're up on the game, subsumed in illusory superiority.

And that's when "the little things" get you.

It's an interesting concept, slightly dumbed down for a police thriller. But, the basic concept of being haunted by the past and your failures is a good spin on the old cop/young cop cliché. The old dog teaches the new dog survival skills; the DNA is deeply embedded there, but without the irony of the lessons being subverted by reality. After searching for demons so long, the cops can't stop seeing the demons and, finally, become them. The lesson is no demons. And no angels, either.

There's some subtle stuff going on, that may not permeate casual popcorn-crunching. And Hancock tosses out visual red herrings, like religious iconography, that merely seem to be part of the landscape rather than being relevant. The time-setting of the 90's would appear to be one of those red-herrings, if the absence of cell-phones weren't so integral to making the plot work. And he does nice little subverting tricks: when the cops are investigating a crime-scene, all the lights are out due to a power-outtage and a big shock comes when the lights suddenly turn ON; he does a deft transition from day to night with the movement of a car's side-mirror. These are just little things that turn a cliché on its ear.

But, the movie is full of "little things," begging to be paid attention to, lest they escalate to everlasting regret. 

* Hancock wrote it in 1993 and Spielberg was at one point attached to direct but passed finding the material "too dark"...and that it was mighty close to the 1991 release of Silence of the Lambs. Eastwood, who'd directed Hancock's script of A Perfect World, was also attached, at one point.