This could've been a dope neo-noir, instead it's an average crime drama that desperately wants to be Seven.

Nothing here really works.

Denzel looks burnt out which is perfect for his haunted cop, butI don't feel anything foe his character.

Rami Malek is playing a normal person for once, and it feels hallow cause his line readings don't fit with the character he's supposed to be playing.

Jared Leto is playing another weird Jared Leto character.

The direction is flat. You can see better on TV. And the script MOS DEF needed some more work. Maybe another draft or 2.

It's amazing to me how average this is considering how long this has been kicking around Hollywood with the various directors attached.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/1HZAnkxdYuA

>It's amazing to me how average this is considering how long
>this has been kicking around Hollywood with the various
>directors attached.
>
>Trailer: https://youtu.be/1HZAnkxdYuA

I mean, is how often is that a good sign? Another recent example that comes to mind is Triple Frontier which kicked around forever downgrading in talent/directors before falling in Chandor's lap.

I'm glad this is coming to HBOMax because this seems like low/mid-tier Denzel (Fallen, Out of Time, Bone Collector, etc.) that exist for no other reason than to be re-run on TNT and fill a January release date and so cutting out the theatrical run seems like getting cutting out the middleman.

From the trailer, Malek seems woefully miscast and as you noted Jared Leto seems to be doing what he always does.

I'm looking forward to it just have something new to watch but sounds like it lives up to the promise of lack of promise exhibited in the trailer

It's forgettable which is Triple Frontier's biggest sin. Like at least that had some craft to it from the direction to the performances.

The Little Things is just lacking in every department.

It's not terrible and certainly don't find it surprising that people do. So I see what you mean.

Oh well, maybe The Lil' Thangs will thrive amidst my new even lower expectations.

Probably not.

At least Judas and Black Messiah is coming to Max next month!

I hope it gets awards love.

It's my most anticipated film of the year

It gets points just for that.

Definitely TNT material. Rami Malek is miscast but not as bad as I thought he'd be. Jared Leto is Jared Leto but there's something endearing about his weirdo choices here vs. say Suicide Squad because it ends up working in the context of the film and what it's doing.

It doesn't always work and I could see it turning a lot of people off but it's honestly really interesting and, depending on your reading, really fucked up in a couple of different ways. It's also, kind of perfect for the times we live in.

I wouldn't have seen this in the theater regardless but I'm definitely not mad I watched at home. It's largely forgettable but memorable enough so that in 5 years I'll be like "Hey, what was that weird little detective movie that Denzel did? You know, the one with Mr. Robot and Jared Leto? Oh yeah, that's right! What a weird little movie that was!"

Especially because, for like 5 minutes, they had me convinced this was going to say something interesting about police violence and "truth".


But then you remember this is a movie written in the early '90s that is probably very jealous of Seven getting made and The Little Things not.

I read A.O. Scott's review and completely agree with him except for the part where it seems like he kind of liked this? I wish this had either leaned into its potential to be a rad B movie by taking itself less seriously or was thoughtful at all about the story it was telling. Which is a weird thing to say about a script Hancock spent three decades stewing on.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I literally thought it was set in the 90s because the movie couldn't happen in a world with cell phones.

If that's the case, it's kind of fascinating that trajectory of the two film (Se7en and ALT) especially because the latter feels like the inverse of Se7en on several levels. I literally read the climactic scene as a direct reference to Se7en.

I got this thought last night that this felt like an American remake of a Korean film only without the actual Korean original. It feels like a film Bong Joon-Ho would have made a masterpiece with something to say about police violence and class out of and the guy who did The Blind Side would have been brought in to do a remake in which all the punches are pulled, which is largely what we got.

The ending just didn't really land for me.

A lot of it seemed like you were ready for Denzel and Rami to go on a heavy/interesting philosophical tangent like their own version of True Detective Season 1, but the dialogue just never went there?

Rami's character wasn't strong enough for me to ever really buy into him playing it, agree that he was miscast

I’m like, this guy is doing a LOT with a little, and it’s unintentionally hilarious.

Some of the editing choices were really strange and random and the ending just didnt work. I was super hyped for this movie when they announced the cast but im not sure what i just watched. Just did not work at all

They way they chopped up scenes for no reason made it seem like they either only shot 1-2 takes of everything or lost a few hard drives of footage or something. Seriously some of the most distractingly terrible editing I've seen in awhile.

That weird car chase scene drug on way too long, and in some shots the CGI used for Denzel's car looks like a cutscene from GTA.

It felt like there were entire missing scenes also...the one cat they interrogated killed himself after hearing the name of the girl that Denzel accidentally killed. They never showed anything that would lead to any kind of connection there...it's like they missed shooting a flashback showing Denzel interrogating him for that girls death and trying to pin it on him or something. I don't know, but the way it's edited they counted on the audience to just make something up to explain it. And that's just one example of something that felt missing.

Between this script passing through the hands of multiple directors, and being edited during Covid, it feels like there were parts of the story in Hancock's head that he just forgot the audience didn't know about.

I only watched this movie the one time but it lives in my head rent free the way James Harden blurts out Daryl Morey disses in China

Highly recommended to anyone who wants to see a handful of movies they like smushed up into a clump of shit, all due respect to Denzel


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

but denzel is endlessly watchable. i don't recall ever seeing a bad performance from him. i'm going to start watching the other forgettable movies he graced that i never bothered with before.

jared leto was rightly creepy in this. rami only seems to fit certain roles well, and this wasn't one.

Denzel Denzels all over, in the ever growing pantheon of so method they become something else entirely Jared Leto roles I've never been closer (truthfully, his Gucci role eclipsed this) to listening to at least a third of a 30 Seconds to Mars album and every beat Malek fails to match Pitt's anguish I don't think, from memory, I'd blame him for



But goddamn is this movie bunk, and somebody's gonna have to say something way more interesting than "Denzel Washington is fucking entertaining" to convince me it's worth revisting.



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

is that it does make a subtly conscious (not accidental or maybe) point about police crime. how people gloss over it isn't the fault of the writer/director because it's there. other than that, it is a pastiche of better movies, but that POV makes it modern and recommends itself to an extent. i agree also that it was like a smart korean movie if it were remade, only it's not. i'm happy i watched it even if i never do again.

because the ending really sticks with me specifically for what it says about police crime and the fact that we're trained to think it's going to end one way but it's not that at all which is I think a large part of the reason people don't like the movie that much outside of Malek.

The "it's an Americanized Korean movie made to be run ad nauseum on TNT and watched by dads" analysis is spot on

if it cut the epilogue, it's more of a typical hollywood ending with some degree of satisfaction and less to think about. that it stayed with that particular message rang true to me and elevated the overall quality of the film.

i noticed throughout the normalization of corruption, the fear that lawlessness struck in low-level criminals and deviants, the charm, the con, the seduction that played out in the final act. it had the look and to an extent feel of a TNT detective story but the themes of a korean crime drama, which is interesting considering when it was written.

But within ten minutes or so I found myself so annoyed I actually started taking notes that were nitpicking on a CinemaSins level of "dude, you do realize this IS what the movie is?" navel gazing. Like I said above, I do think the stars do what they can for it, but upon rewatch it was truly the editing as much as anything that never gives this thing a chance.


It's like if somebody's Make-A-Wish dream was to pace Se7en like A Walk to Remember. At its most consistent shittiness it feels like it prefers the plot to the performances, like Denzel and Retta in the morgue. Everything about it feels like each shot was taken from sometime before or after they found it. Between Denzel's coming to prefer theater acting and Retta basically only having the all-day adlibbing of Parks & Rec to tap into their rapport feels so imaginary, and this isn't some Lynchian/Garlandesque movie where that's the point.


In other words, two actors I like do a scene propelling the plot of a type of movie I'm predisposed to like and if it weren't for the set designer, the camera quality and/or Denzel's inability to suck...like you said, it's a TNT feature (made for TNT, never screened). It'd be one thing if the movie felt like it was having fun balancing the screenplay against the cast, but it's not!


Shrug off all the malfeasance of the third act, let the first act indulge in its "old Black cop failed when it mattered most but he's still Got the Touch, Got the Power (s/o Stan Bush) and unless he buys what the latest Idiot Savant White Dummy is framing as redemption he'll never know peace" because it arguably employs race more accidentally than the early 90s movies that buried this one, but the way this movie meanders into its second act...man...


First of all, even though Denzel (mostly) resists the temptation he's suddenly storming around town in one size too NBA Draft suits just like Creasy. Shortly after, him and Mr. Robot are housing pancakes while hop-scotching each others' questions "subtly" (ie. extremely) significant to both the plot and their mutually unique desire to be movie characters who'd sell their soul in order to make their target less of a two-legged MacGuffin that'll never solve their true trauma? As soon as this movie shamelessly reminds you of a movie where an aggrieved Denzel drives the plot rather than succumbs to it, he's immediately wrangled and forced back into a part, no offense, Colman Domingo or the Ubuntu President of the Allstate of Commerce could've played (sorry, Mr. Haysbert).


I'll admit that I hate I ranted like this about this movie, because like I said above, "like I said above" I do enjoy the performances quite a bit. I know it's fun to shit on Leto but I think he found a real creep here, and without any insight into whether Malek saw Gyllenhaal's performance in Prisoners I think he dodges most of the script's attempts to mold a queer mirror image of Pitts' Mills out of him. Though if I weren't allowed any caveats I'd say this is one of those roles where some level of the process, from casting all the way to cinematography, let alone script or direction, exposed an actor pretty uncomfortably. Rami Malek is attention grabbing by virtue of his presence, but in really distracting and suck ass ways.


But more than anything, while I don't have a lot of these sorts of movies in my pocket - I'll name Hard Rain and Justice League for sake of reference - I'm so fascinated by your insistence that this movie is remotely "OK". I think my history on PTP's made it clear I'm not the most predictable dude either - talking about movies would be dull as hell if we couldn't confuse ourselves every so often, let alone each other - and yet...


THIS. MOVIE. IS. ASS. BUD.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

it's the mom from snowfall. i never thought of retta through the course of that series, but i can see it. that would've been an interesting dramatic turn, but i haven't seen good girls.

i was in no rush to see this based on this post and its lack of fanfare during COVID. i knew my year of max was coming to an end and gave it a shot, being a fan of some of the people involved. for me, it was competently made, and that and another denzel movie under my belt might have been all i thought if not for the way it handled police crime, specifically showing its insidiousness and treating it so casually.

i march to the beat of my own drummer as well when it comes to film. i'm not involved in film discussions outside of this board and individual conversations, but to add fuel to the fire, i've set this to public for a couple days or until i grow tired of it:
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur5446060/ratings

Swore I saw Retta in the cast. Ouch.


I'll wear that, same as I've been trying to say this IS a movie full of people doing the things we love to see them do. So I'd never say it's not entertaining.


The movie just seems so impressed with its bland shitty crap that I'm here pointlessly arguing that you should've enjoyed it less than you did. Which makes me even more frustrated with it.


Denzel's catalog would've enjoyed the moldy mashup of (VERY selective trims of) Out of Time and Fallen this movie isn't.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

people say of it, "just turn off your brain and enjoy it!" and "it's so stupid, it's great!" maybe so, but i sooner invested the time in seeing an all-time great actor and two good ones just perform; that's entertaining enough for me. that i could go in with that subdued expectation and be pleasantly surprised with the subtle way it made a timely point is what impressed me.

i'm not sure what i go into with a critical eye because i'd rather see where the film takes me. there are directors and some screenwriters i expect much of and maybe grade them higher if it's not up there with IMO their best. this guy is not one of those. i have to remind myself who he is even though i like his other films. sometimes that's nice.