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Thursday March 28, 2024

Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto sizzle in detective thriller The Little Things

By Pa
May 03, 2021

Damon Smith reviews the latest download, streaming, premium video on-demand and DVD/Blu-ray releases, including The Little Things and Locked Down

FILM OF THE WEEK: THE LITTLE THINGS

Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) reluctantly returns to his old stomping ground in Los Angeles to collect evidence for an active case. He arrives in the middle of a press conference led by his replacement, Detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), who is on the trail of a suspect with a similar MO to the unsolved case that tipped Deke over the edge.

With the FBI threatening to seize control of the case, Baxter invites Deke to join him and colleagues Jamie Estrada (Natalie Morales) and Sal Rizoli (Chris Bauer) as they work the latest crime scene. Deke’s valuable insight leads the task force to disturbed electrical appliance repairman Albert Sparma (Jared Leto).

The Little Things is an old-fashioned tour of the mean streets of early 1990s Los Angeles. Grounded by Washington’s understated and emotionally textured performance, John Lee Hancock’s crime thriller lacks nail-biting tension and fully realised, nuanced characters.

The writer-director originally penned the script in 1993, the year after The Silence Of The Lambs raised multiple glasses of Chianti at the Oscars and sparked a slew of well-intentioned imitators. Dust still lingers in the air of his slow-burning narrative, which gives Leto free rein to ramp up the creepiness on a misfit prime suspect to the point of laughability.

The most urgent repairs to Hancock’s picture are required in a dishevelled final act that seemingly careens into the same grim territory as Se7en (released in 1995) only to take a deeply dissatisfying detour at the last second. Rating: ***

LOCKED DOWN

Ex-con Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lives in London during lockdown with his American girlfriend Linda (Anne Hathaway). “We’re only together because we’re in the same house,” sneers Linda between generous sloshes of white wine as the relationship moulders.

Paxton is furloughed from his job as a delivery van driver while Linda has the unfortunate task of announcing compulsory redundancies to her staff via Zoom. In the midst of their downward spiral, Paxton and Linda realise their respective jobs will collide on a Saturday night at Harrods as the department store removes valuable stock from its floors.

The couple hatches a daredevil plan to steal the Harris Diamond, worth £3 million pounds, and replace it with a replica. Locked Down is a light-fingered comedy drama, which feels like an experiment in filmmaking under duress.

Director Doug Liman and screenwriter Steven Knight focused too hard on whether they could achieve their bold ambitions during the second UK lockdown without considering whether they should. Hathaway and Ejiofor share inert screen chemistry and their characters’ best moments are when they are apart, furiously banging saucepans to honour NHS heroes or dancing wildly to the beat of Stand And Deliver by Adam & The Ants.

Knight’s ability to edit verbose dialogue evidently went into quarantine because his lead characters are incapable of communicating succinctly or realistically. It’s difficult to understand what attracted these prosaic pontificators to each other or how a preposterous scheme to steal a diamond might magically get the relationship back on track. By the time the heist unfolds, I was none the wiser. Rating: **

OXYGEN

Alexandre Aja, French director of Crawl and the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, sucks all of the air out of the room with a nail-biting survival thriller penned by Christie LeBlanc. Elizabeth Hansen (Melanie Laurent) regains consciousness in a claustrophobic cryogenic pod without any memory of her past or how she ended up in a confined space slightly bigger than a coffin. With a dwindling oxygen supply and a mounting sense of dread, Elizabeth must piece together fragments of her mind to understand the chain of events that trapped her alone in the pod.

MONSTER

Adapted from Walter Dean Myers’s award-winning young adult novel, Monster is a legal drama directed by Anthony Mandler, glimpsed through the eyes of a promising student who pays heavily for one bad decision.

Seventeen-year-old film student Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is a popular and talented member of class at his elite high school. Living in Harlem with his proud parents (Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Hudson), Steve is a glittering example of success through hard work until he is charged with felony murder.

In the blink of an eye, the teenager’s world comes crashing down around him and he faces the terrifying prospect of spending the rest of his days behind bars. As Steve wrestles with the question of whether a single moment should define his life, competing force inside the American justice system decide his fate. Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson and John David Washington co-star.

MYTHIC QUEST – Season 2

The critically acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy created by Charlie Day, Megan Ganz and Rob McElhenney returns for an eventful second series set in the aftermath of a Covid quarantine. Following the phenomenal success of the Raven’s Banquet expansion to their multi-player online role-playing game, creative director Ian Grimm (McElhenney) and newly promoted co-creative director Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) are tasked with plotting the game’s next iteration.

Back in the office surrounded by their team, the creative wizards seek inspiration while head writer CW Longbottom (F Murray Abraham) confronts ghosts of the past. Elsewhere, David Brittlesbee (David Hornsby) is bereft when his trusty assistant Jo (Jessie Ennis) takes up a new position working alongside Brad (Danny Pudi).