Review: Hunting '90s Killers Again in 'The Little Things'

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Denzel Washington and Jared Leto in a scene from "The Little Things." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Denzel Washington and Jared Leto in a scene from "The Little Things." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
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Review: Hunting '90s Killers Again in 'The Little Things'

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Denzel Washington and Jared Leto in a scene from "The Little Things." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Denzel Washington and Jared Leto in a scene from "The Little Things." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Even before the pandemic, “The Little Things” would have been a throwback.

Star-laden thrillers, with studio scale and high-priced craft, are one of those genres that's been mostly squeezed out by the mega-sized movies that crowd Hollywood's assembly lines. A movie directed by John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) with Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto is by no means a modest production. But in pre-COVID Hollywood, it was a seldom-seen, relatively little thing. Post-COVID, it's an even more striking exception.

If “The Little Things” feels of another movie era, that's not a coincidence. It was first written (by Hancock) in the '90s, and it's set in 1990. For anyone who pines for the days of “Manhunter,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Se7en,” “The Little Things” is like a warm blanket of, you know, morgue forensics, grisly crime scenes and serial killer mania.

That should have been enough time to hammer out some of the holes and implausibility that creeps into “The Little Things,” an almost sturdy, often gripping genre exercise that ultimately doesn't find enough fresh material in the serial killer procedural to warrant its blast from a stylish and shlocky past.

But — and it's a significant qualifier — Denzel. “The Little Things,” which Warner Bros. will release Friday in theaters and on HBO Max, may be being sold on the basis of its Oscar-winning trio of stars. But who needs three stars when one of them is Denzel Washington?

He plays Joe “Deke” Deacon, a humble deputy in California's Kern County sent to Los Angeles to retrieve a piece of evidence. We initially expect, as Deke rolls into L.A. in his beaten-up truck and gets condescending glances from detectives in well-fitting suits, a fish-out-of-water story. But it turns out to be a grim homecoming for Deke, a former LAPD investigator who we steadily learn departed the department five years earlier, leaving behind plenty of colleagues burned out by his obsession and rigor.

Deke — deliberate, dedicated, righteous — is a natural fit for Denzel. Riding along on a murder case while in Los Angeles, he finds himself again on the hunt for the killer he couldn't catch five years earlier. Soon, he's taking vacation days to stick around and stealthily work the case. It ostensibly belongs to Jimmy Dexter (Malek), a more polished, camera-ready detective who sets up at first as a foil to Deke but quickly turns partner. A family man whose strong work ethic hasn't yet turned into self-destructive obsession, Jimmy could be a younger version of Deke.

At first, their interplay is terrific. At the crime scene, they stalk the blood-splattered floors like rival dancers, with darting eyes, each drawn to different clues. Recognizing each other's talent, they begin working together, with Deke a wise but possibly dangerous mentor to Jimmy. Here, “The Little Things” verges on becoming more than a Michael Mann knockoff and closer to an excellent new season of “True Detective.”

But things go awry with the introduction of their prime suspect, Albert Sparma (Leto), an abundantly creepy, greasy-haired loner who feels out of serial-killer central casting. Leto brings the juiced-up eccentricity and flamboyance to the part that you'd expect of the Joker actor. There's a suggestion of shared voyeurism in his depravity and the detectives' lurid investigations.

But by making Sparma's familiar if often unconvincing games of cat and mouse so central, Hancock loses the grip he had on Deke. Like “Se7en,” “The Little Things,” gets drawn toward a climax down dusty backroads. But instead of suspense growing, the film devolves into a not-especially-plausible “C.S.I.” episode. Maybe the small screen, where most will watch “The Little Things,” is still the thriller's home for now. But it only serves as a reminder for how much Denzel, a movie star of bigger things, is so suited to larger canvases.

It's also already impossible to imagine a film like “The Little Things” being made any time soon, with police protagonists of color, without any consideration of police brutality or social justice. “The Little Things” was always locked in the ‘90s, but it’s also already a relic.



Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.

Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in “Top Gun: Maverick,” has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on “Maverick,” takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.

And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.

But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in “F1,” has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” In the opening scene of “F1,” he’s sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team’s car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.

Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and “F1” is off to the races.

The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer’s score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team’s chief.

Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on “F1.”

Whether “F1” pleases diehards, I’ll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski’s films as well as wonders like Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When “F1” heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK’s fabled Silverstone Circuit.

OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There’s what I’d call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it’s clear that he’s going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that’s in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.

This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he’s limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.

A relationship does develop, but “F1” struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt’s Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Condon is a rush of naturalism.

If there’s something preventing “F1” from hitting full speed, it’s its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny’s motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from “Grand Prix” to “Senna” to “Ferrari” — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.

“F1” steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.