January and February have become Hollywood's landfill in the last decade. Most of the films slotted for a January or February release are done so for a reason: they’ve either had major production issues, big reshoots, rewrites, or anything that could possibly delay a movie from being released. In short, they’re slotted in for these two months because the companies that distribute them aren’t exactly holding out for them to be very successful. I was hoping that because of the circumstances of this year, that this would be different; however, the first new release of 2021 that I watched, The Little Things, did little to pay back that hope.
This movie has actually been in a production traffic jam since the 90s. After first being written in the 90s by The Blind Side Director John Lee Hancock, this movie went nowhere for twenty years, and you can tell. This movie feels like something that would’ve been released in the 90s alongside Silence of the Lambs and Seven. However, that was thirty years ago. Since then many psychological crime thrillers have been released, and as far as The Little Things goes, it's not very thrilling, or psychologically engaging. Instead, it's a very tedious, poorly edited, throw away film. The film follows a small town detective who returns to a big city where he had once worked to try and crack a case that the new hot shot detective is struggling with. If it sounds familiar, it's because it's as generic as you can get when it comes to crime drama/thrillers. Denzel Washington as the film's lead does a perfectly fine job, nowhere near his best however, and Rami Malik feels very miscast. Malik, who plays the new hot shot detective, isn’t very convincing. He plays more like the serial killer that he’s trying to find than an actual detective. Jared Leto turns in a very Jared Leto performance, as a creepy guy with long hair. The film is clearly trying to be something that's unsettling, and thought provoking; however, it never is. Instead it feels boring, cliche, and overly long. The Little Things is certainly nothing that you haven’t seen before. It's plagued with cliche after cliche. You can tell what John Lee Hancock wanted to do with this film, and what he wanted it to be, but in the end, its biggest issue is that it just doesn’t go anywhere. You wait and you wait for little to no pay off.
It’s disappointing to see Rami Malik turn in a performance that is nowhere near his standard. I hope whatever he works on next is much stronger, but ultimately, it was a generic and boring story paired with at times, horrendous editing that gave this film its issues. The Little Things would have probably made a better TV series than a movie.
The Little Things gets a C-
This movie has actually been in a production traffic jam since the 90s. After first being written in the 90s by The Blind Side Director John Lee Hancock, this movie went nowhere for twenty years, and you can tell. This movie feels like something that would’ve been released in the 90s alongside Silence of the Lambs and Seven. However, that was thirty years ago. Since then many psychological crime thrillers have been released, and as far as The Little Things goes, it's not very thrilling, or psychologically engaging. Instead, it's a very tedious, poorly edited, throw away film. The film follows a small town detective who returns to a big city where he had once worked to try and crack a case that the new hot shot detective is struggling with. If it sounds familiar, it's because it's as generic as you can get when it comes to crime drama/thrillers. Denzel Washington as the film's lead does a perfectly fine job, nowhere near his best however, and Rami Malik feels very miscast. Malik, who plays the new hot shot detective, isn’t very convincing. He plays more like the serial killer that he’s trying to find than an actual detective. Jared Leto turns in a very Jared Leto performance, as a creepy guy with long hair. The film is clearly trying to be something that's unsettling, and thought provoking; however, it never is. Instead it feels boring, cliche, and overly long. The Little Things is certainly nothing that you haven’t seen before. It's plagued with cliche after cliche. You can tell what John Lee Hancock wanted to do with this film, and what he wanted it to be, but in the end, its biggest issue is that it just doesn’t go anywhere. You wait and you wait for little to no pay off.
It’s disappointing to see Rami Malik turn in a performance that is nowhere near his standard. I hope whatever he works on next is much stronger, but ultimately, it was a generic and boring story paired with at times, horrendous editing that gave this film its issues. The Little Things would have probably made a better TV series than a movie.
The Little Things gets a C-