‘The Little Things’ Film Review: Denzel Washington Slouches Through a Disappointing Cop Drama
John Lee Hancock’s latest flirts with big thematic and character ideas but never closes the dealAlonso Duralde | January 26, 2021 @ 10:00 AM Last Updated: January 26, 2021 @ 5:43 PM
Warner Bros.
It’s not a stretch to compare “The Little Things” to a season of HBO’s erratic crime series “True Detective,” from its conflicted cops (played by A-list stars) to its flashbacks from an old crime that colors the investigators’ judgment of a new case.
It’s a comparison that works all too well, since writer-director John Lee Hancock’s procedural very often feels like an eight-episode series that’s been chopped into an ungainly two-hour feature, with lots of motivation, plotting and thematic coherence left on the cutting-room floor.