'The Little Things': Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and John Lee Hancock Tease a Twisted Neo-Noir with Incredible Performances
THE FILM, STARRING DENZEL WASHINGTON AND RAMI MALEK AS A PAIR OF DETECTIVES INVESTIGATING A SERIAL KILLER IN LOS ANGELES, WAS CHARACTERIZED BY WRITER-DIRECTOR JOHN LEE HANCOCK AS BOTH EMBRACING AND SUBVERTING THE CRIME GENRE.
Warner Bros. Pictures held a digital press conference Saturday for their upcoming neo-noir thriller “The Little Things,” written and directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto, with Hancock and Mark Johnson credited as producers. The press conference was attended by all of the above, and it provided some compelling insights into a crime drama that respects its classic predecessors, while also making an effort to pave its own path in the genre.
“The Little Things” is set in October 1990, as Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) goes to Los Angeles for a routine assignment, only to find himself embroiled in a hunt for a serial killer when Jim Baxter (Malek), Sergeant for the L.A. County Sheriff, unofficially enlists his help. However, as the two work together, the case begins to dredge up skeletons from Deke’s own past. In addition to riveting performances, the film also features music from the legendary Thomas Newman and multiple returning collaborators of Hancock’s behind the camera, including cinematographer John Schwartzman and editor Robert Frazen.
Hancock - making his second foray as a director into crime dramas after 2019’s “The Highwaymen” - elaborated on what he felt “The Little Things” needed to do differently. “I’d been a big fan of crime dramas,” said Hancock, “but I kinda felt it had become stale, because of the third act… the good guy chasing the bad guy, and then dispatching the bad guy… that was always less interesting to me than the first two acts… I thought, was there a way to embrace the genre and subvert it at the same time?”
Hancock originally wrote the script in the early 1990s - hence the setting - and the delay between writing the film and making it proved fortuitous to him. “There was a whole bunch of criminal investigation forensics type stuff [in the script],” Hancock elaborated, “when I wrote it, nobody was seeing that stuff. There was no ‘CSI,’ no ‘The First 48.’ Now, every one of us gets educated every week on forensics. So I was able to take all of that out of the script, which actually makes the script better.”
With Hancock being able to trim the forensics lessons from his script, “The Little Things” gives its lead performers - and their characters - more room to breathe. “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage, so I just read the script and found it interesting,” said Washington. “I never thought about what it was gonna allow me to explore. It was the opportunity to work with [Malek and Leto].” When asked what was different about Deke in comparison to other law enforcement characters Washington has played in the past, he joked, “About 35 pounds… [but] you don’t imagine the character [when] you read the script. You have to find the character.”
Malek found an angle to play Baxter off of in the script, centered around the way he interacts with Deke. “I did definitely love the idea of Jim beginning to emulate Deke, and the psychology that that would take me down as an actor,” said Malek, “starting out with this really altruistic perspective and having that… be turned into obsession… personally, if I see wisdom, and great instincts in front of me, I’ll lean on that… to lean on someone who clearly had been there before and clearly seen something so dark… you knew in a sense it could get him down a harmful road, but there was something advantageous to working with this man.” Malek even tied working as Baxter into life during COVID-19 stating, “[when] obsession takes over so many aspects of your life… we get so focused on certain things… a certain tunnel vision of what has to be achieved… we start to neglect the most important things [in life].”
The darkness inherent in hunting down a killer, however, is like a bright light in comparison to inhabiting the mind of the killer yourself. Leto discussed what it was like being in the mindset of Albert Sparma, the primary suspect. “I think of Sparma as kind of a charmer, [because] I wasn’t on the receiving end of what [seemed] scary or terrifying,” Leto explained, “I didn’t specifically research killers. I did a lot of observing and watching, whether it was documentaries or FBI transcripts, my fair share of reading… I spent more time thinking about [Sparma] as a person… what made him tick, why he couldn’t connect with people.” When asked about the look of the character, Leto explained: “we did quite a bit [of prosthetics]… there’s a walk and a talk [created for the character], [Hancock] was there to be the first line of defense… I took the walk from Kim Jong-un,” Leto said, and it was unclear whether or not he was joking in comparing the character’s movements to those of the North Korean leader. It will have to be up to audiences to decide for themselves.
Ultimately, what Saturday’s press conference revealed about “The Little Things” is that it features three exceptionally talented, Academy Award-winning performers, thoroughly inhabiting complex characters in a gritty neo-noir brought passionately to life by a writer-director after decades of waiting.
“The Little Things” releases in theaters on January 29th, 2021, simultaneous with a one-month-long release on HBO Max, in line with Warner Bros.’ plans for the rest of their 2021 slate. Check out the trailer below.