LITTLE THINGS MOVIE
LITTLE THINGS SERIAL

LITTLE THINGS SERIAL

The serial killer this time, much like the serial killer last time, is targeting young women, which is both a depressingly accurate representation of real-world psychopathy and a reminder of how generic the conventions of crime fiction have inevitably become. In traditional buddy-cop-movie fashion, Baxter and Deke initially rub each other the wrong way before settling into a comfortable groove: They’re two equally dogged investigators, brought together by a case as grisly and puzzling as the one that ended Deke’s career. He also meets Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a young hotshot who’s being hailed as his spiritual successor. reawakens Deke’s memories of those still-unsolved crimes (glimpsed here in quick, jolting flashbacks), even as it puts him back in contact with his old friends and nemeses on the force. Washington plays Joe “Deke” Deacon, who spent many years as a Los Angeles homicide detective, until a failed serial-murder investigation drove him nearly mad and led him to retreat north to Kern County, where he now works as a sheriff’s deputy.

LITTLE THINGS MOVIE

(His capable collaborators include the cinematographer John Schwartzman, shooting on digital, and the production designer Michael Corenblith.) And he’s had the good sense to cast Washington, incidentally one of a handful of movie stars who remain as popular now as they were in the ’90s.

Once floated as a project for Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood (who in 1993 had just filmed Hancock’s script for “A Perfect World”), the movie has now been directed by Hancock himself, who brings his sturdy, unfussy craftsmanship to bear on his own material. Twenty-eight years later, we have at least some semblance of an answer - a respectable “probably not.” Of course, the version before us, which is being released in a few theaters and on HBO Max, is merely an approximation of what might have been. It’s interesting to think what might have become of “The Little Things” if it had been produced back then, and to wonder if it might have joined their grisly but rarefied company. Less apparent, though it makes sense in retrospect, is the fact that Hancock actually wrote the script in the 1990s - in 1993, to be exact, sandwiched between the releases of “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “Seven” (1995), the two crowning achievements of a renaissance decade for serial-killer cinema. Simply put, “The Little Things” is set in the 1990s - a fact driven home by images of an older, less gentrified Los Angeles, and also by the recurring sight of cops using pay phones. So swiftly does the writer-director John Lee Hancock create a sense of menace that the significance of some of those little things - the B-52’s “Roam” blaring from the car radio, the conspicuous absence of a cellphone - might elude you, too, until after you’ve finally exhaled.

This fastidiously grim psychological thriller opens on a dark stretch of California highway, illuminated only by a young woman’s headlights - and then by the lights of the car that speeds up behind her, then roars ahead before coming to a sudden, disquieting stop. I should admit that I missed a few at the very beginning.

Long before Denzel Washington opens his mouth to explain, the meaning of the title “The Little Things” is clear enough: Pay close attention, because details matter.

Little things