The Oscar winner brings all his gravitas to role of a world-weary former detective, alongside Rami Malek as his fellow investigator and Jared Leto as their prime suspect.
The opening scene in the midnight-dark, period piece serial killer thriller “The Little Things” feels like a lift from a certain segment in “The Silence of the Lambs,” as if to acknowledge we’re in for a derivative thrill ride — and though writer-director John Lee Hancock actually penned the original screenplay for this psychological crime noir some 30 years ago, in terms of visual style and mood it reminded me of “Lambs,” with echoes of such works as “L.A. Confidential” and David Fincher’s “Seven” and “Zodiac.” Pretty good albeit disturbing company to keep, and “The Little Things” (which remains set in the early 1990s) is a worthy companion to that roster — a disturbingly effective work with masterful performances from a triad of Oscar winners in prime form. I’m still not sure all the pieces of the razor-edged jigsaw puzzle fit snugly into place when all was said and solved, but isn’t there something exhilarating about character-piece murder mysteries that practically demand debate about not only the main plot, but the actions of the leads? (Eighty years after the debut of “The Maltese Falcon,” one can still make the case Bogie could have gone another way at the end.) From “The Mighty Quinn” (1988) to “Fallen” (1998) to “Training Day” (2001) to “Déjà vu” (2006) to the “Equalizer” movies, Denzel Washington has played a canyon-wide array of current or former law enforcement agents, and also Denzel Washington can do just about anything. So it’s no surprise he fits so comfortably into the role and exudes such world-weary gravitas as Joe “Deke” Deacon, once a legendary homicide detective in Los Angeles County but in recent years living a relatively quiet existence as a deputy sheriff in Kern County, which is about 160 miles north of L.
