'The Little Things' Featurette Highlights The Film's Three Oscar-Winning Leads
The Little Things has a pretty big selling point: all three of its leads – Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto – are Oscar winners. That fact has been plastered all over the poster for the flick, and now, a featurette is here to sing the praises of those actors. In the behind-the-scenes look at the film below, Washington, Malek, and Leto talk about how cool it is to be working together.
The Little Things Featurette
Denzel Washington is a two-time Oscar winner, taking home Best Supporting Actor for Glory and Best Actor for Training Day. Jared Leto won Best Supporting Actor for Dallas Buyers Club, and Rami Malek took home a Best Actor Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody. And now all three of those actors are together on screen in The Little Things, a thriller that arrives in theaters and on HBO Max this Friday.
When you have that sort of star power in your movie, you advertise it. Sure enough, a bulk of the marketing for The Little Things has played up the fact that three Oscar winners are leading the flick, and this new featurette has Washington, Malek, and Leto on hand to talk about what it was like to work together. And, as you might expect, the younger Malek and Leto both point out that Washington is a legend and it's a big deal to share the screen with him.
In The Little Things, "Deputy Sheriff Joe 'Deke' Deacon (Washington) joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter (Malek) to search for a serial killer who's terrorizing Los Angeles. As they track the culprit, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke's past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case." John Lee Hancock wrote and directed the film, but at one point – back in the 1990s – filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood were considering making the film.
I've seen The Little Things, and I can't say the movie blew me away. I'll admit the performances from the three leads are strong, but the film itself is a mish-mash of serial killer thriller tropes you've seen dozens of times before. As I wrote in my review:
Hancock's direction is slick but mostly anonymous. There's a distinct lack of style here, save for some flashbacks and an admittedly memorable moment where cops search a pitch-black crime scene where the power has been cut off. Back in the 1990s, Steven Spielberg was considering directing Hancock's script, as were Clint Eastwood, Warren Beatty, and Danny DeVito, and it's hard not to imagine how much more interesting this thing would've turned out if any of those directors had taken the gig.
As entertaining as it may be to revel in the 1990s setting of it all, not updating the script makes The Little Things feel stale. The bad guys are one-note creeps; the men are stoic and violent; the women only exist to be either background noise or helpless victims. Even some 30 years ago all of this would've felt dated. Today, The Little Things has even less to offer.
The Little Things opens in theaters and debuts on HBO Max on January 29.