Movie · 2021 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · 2h 8m · R · English
Curator score: 1.2/10 (328.1K ratings)
Some things never let us go.
Overview
Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter 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.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.2/10
IMDb: 6.3/10
Letterboxd: 2.63/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 45%
Metacritic: 54
TMDB: 6.3/10
Director
John Lee Hancock
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures, Gran Via Productions
Cast
Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt, Terry Kinney, Natalie Morales, Isabel Arraiza, Joris Jarsky, Glenn Morshower, Sofia Vassilieva, Jason James Richter, John Harlan Kim, Frederick Koehler, Judith Scott, Maya Kazan, Tiffany Gonzáles, Anna McKitrick, Sheila Houlahan, Ebony N Mayo
Curator Review
Verdict
A moody, old-school serial-killer procedural with strong atmosphere and committed lead performances, but it’s also frustratingly undercooked and overly familiar. If you like slow-burn crime dramas that prioritize dread, character damage, and 1990s noir texture over clean payoff, it may work for you.
Best for
fans of bleak serial-killer thrillers
viewers who enjoy procedural atmosphere more than twist-heavy plotting
people interested in damaged-detective stories
audiences open to a deliberately retro crime-movie feel
Skip if
you want a sharp, modern thriller with a strong final act
you’re impatient with ambiguity and loose plotting
you dislike slow pacing or familiar genre beats
you need a truly scary or suspenseful serial-killer movie
Overview
The Little Things wants to feel like a lost 1990s studio thriller: dusty, fatalistic, and built around cops haunted by the cases they can’t close. It has the ingredients for that mode — a grim Los Angeles setting, a weary investigation, and three actors with enough gravity to sell the material on paper.
Worth noting
In practice, the movie is more effective as mood than as mystery. The pacing is slack, the screenplay leans hard on familiar serial-killer tropes, and the central investigation never quite earns the weight it’s reaching for. Still, there’s something watchable in the way it commits to melancholy over momentum.
Bottom line
For viewers who miss the era of mid-budget crime dramas, this has a certain throwback appeal. But if you’re expecting the taut dread or formal precision of the films it echoes, the gaps are hard to ignore.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Mario Alegre (1.5★) · 4014 likes
Denzel Washington: “Just give me my check”
Rami Malek: “This is way harder when I can’t lip sync my way through a performance”
Jared Leto: “I didn’t bathe for over six months, murdered three hamsters and developed a hilarious strut in preparation for this role”
nickusen · 3153 likes
Denzel shouting, “your dick is as hard as chinese arithmetic, why is that, huh!?” would have caused audiences to go absolutely nuts in 1997, the year I assume this was supposed to be released
Matt Neglia (1.5★) · 1978 likes
It’s the little things that make a movie. It’s the writing, the directing, the performances, the cinematography, the score, the mood, the setting, the sound, the pacing, the story....It’s the little things. It’s the little things that...get you caught with a bad movie.
Ethan Ethan (1★) · 1586 likes
I feel like everyone involved was forced into being a part of this. Except Jared Leto.
KYK (1.5★) · 1050 likes
denzel washington: “your dick is as hard as chinese arithmetic”
<“climactic” scene>jared: leto: "oh poop i made a boo-boo"rami malek: “what did you say?”jared leto: “poop”
this movie should be included in every screenwriting syllabus.
ps. it’s impossible not to bite ur lower lip while looking at rami malek — not in a horny way but because his mouth is permanently pursing like that and you just find yourself mirroring him. at the very end of the movie, you can see denzel doing the same thing with his lips — probably an involuntary reaction to spending so much time with rami.