Rahul Chettiyar | Published on 07 Feb 2021 Written and directed by John Lee Hancock, The Little Things marks the first of many WB films to hit HBO Max this year, as part of their newly-formed joint venture. And we must say right away, for an early impression of what’s to come, it does set itself up for quite the disappointment. The main culprit here is the screenplay. Not so much for the content itself, but because it was written back in the 1990s. So basically, it just ends up picking on every pre-existing, worn-out clichés in existence. Set in the vibrant city of Los Angeles, our manhunt story opens up with a rather interesting chain of events, as we are thrown into the midst of a late-night car chase sequence. A sinister scene, tightly resembling Fincher’s Zodiac, sees our menacing killer calmly stalking a young lady into the deepest levels of fear. Throughout this well-played out segment, his face is kept hidden, adding to the alluring sense of mystery and deceit, going forward. A great, riveting start to an unnerving psychological crime thriller, is what we thought. What we didn’t know at the time, was that it was probably going to be one of the better, more interesting parts of the entire movie! Sitting through the next couple of minutes, we are introduced to one of our protagonists, Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington), a burnt-out deputy sheriff with a keen eye for the tiniest details - “the little things”. As he is then sent to LA for a quick evidence-gathering assignment, he soon becomes entangled in the search for a serial killer terrorizing the city. And *surprise-surprise*, this new murder investigation happens to be eerily similar to a case he worked on years ago. So, he partners with Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), a young, hot-shot, police detective Sergeant to try and solve the case, once and for all. It’s a clichéd plot device that’s been bludgeoned to death at least a hundred times over. And it would’ve still been fine, as long as this movie had something new or compelling to grasp on to. Something that could carry the 128-minute-long dreary runtime. Sadly, it doesn’t.