76 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021
THECURRENTCINEMA
CONNECTIONS
“The Little Things,” “Supernova,” and “Two of Us.”
BYANTHONYLANE
ILLUSTRATION BY AJ DUNGO
I
t’s the little things you do together,
as Stephen Sondheim reminded us,
in “Company,” that make perfect rela-
tionships. He listed some of the things:
“concerts you enjoy together, neighbors
you annoy together, children you de-
stroy together,” and so on. There’s a
whole potential movie, right there, and
I was hoping that the new John Lee
Hancock film, “The Little Things,”
might be a riff on Sondheim’s acerbic
song. No joy. Instead, it’s a cop drama
about a serial killer, decked out with
the customary frills: murders you com-
mit together, clues you try to fit to-
gether, ways to get your shit together.
And so on.
The film stars Denzel Washington
as Joe Deacon, known as Deke. The
year is 1990, and Deke is a deputy sheriff
in Kern County, California, but five
years earlier he was part of a homicide
squad in Los Angeles. Bit by bit, we
work out what went wrong. “Got a sus-
pension, a divorce, and a triple bypass,
all in six months. Complete meltdown.
He’s a rush-hour train wreck.” So says
one of his former colleagues, and the
job of “The Little Things” is to put
Deke back on the tracks. Returning to
L.A. on an errand, he is invited by his
successor, Jim Baxter (Rami Malek),
to tag along on a fresh case—the slay-
ings of several women—and to lend
his expertise.
Deke, you understand, is not one of
those standard-issue sleuths who are
contented with fingerprints and blood
types. No, sir. He is of a rarer breed—
the investigating mystic, self-schooled
in criminal divination. Lying on the bed
in darkness, in a cruddy hotel room, he
gazes at images of the victims tacked up
on the wall. Down at the morgue, he
converses with a corpse, saying, “You can
talk to me. I’m the only friend you got.”
Washington is the only actor we
got, I reckon, who can get away with
this stuff. He is one of the few remain-
ing stars to whom we look for nobility.
Having barely appeared on TV since
“St. Elsewhere” ended its run, in 1988, he
reserves himself for cinema, and though
many of his films, like the time-hop-
ping “Déjà Vu” (2006), are rankly ab-
surd, he is never humiliated by hog-
wash. Nor is he hurried, either in his
line readings or in his lordly stroll, by
the demands of vengeful action. His
smile is bestowed like a blessing (watch
him grin at a young woman in a con-
vertible, in “The Little Things,” as she
sails by on the freeway), and, when pre-
sented with material that is worthy of
his gifts, he takes immediate command.
In “Glory” (1989), for which Washing-
ton won his first Oscar, we see him, as
a young private in a Black regiment
during the Civil War, addressing his
fellow-soldiers on the eve of battle. He
is tongue-tied, yet they stop to listen.
Not merely still in himself, he is the
cause of stillness in others.
Nothing so fine emerges from Han-
cock’s movie, whose plot, in the home
stretch, attains a level of implausibility
with which even Washington may be
unfamiliar. Nonetheless, there are plea-
sures to be had, not least in a sumptu-
ous crane shot—the camera inspecting
a suspect vehicle, and the red lights on
its tail, then ascending to a view of the
city and the slow fade-in of dawn. And
it’s fun to see Washington square off
against a brace of performers who could
not resemble him less in bearing and
tone. The first is Malek, who seems, as
usual, to have beamed down recently
from Betelgeuse and not yet nailed his
earthling disguise. The second is Jared
Leto, bearded and coiffed like the Mes-
siah, in the role of a dude named Al-
bert Sparma. Could he be the murderer,
despite the lack of evidence against
him? Not proven, whatever Deke be-
lieves. Is Leto responsible for overact-
ing with unlawful silliness in a built-up
area? Guilty.
I
f you want a story of a same-sex cou-
ple, long past their youth, who find
their love tested when one of them is
struck by a cruel affliction, you’re in
luck! Right now, there are two such
tales on offer, set against very different
backdrops. “Supernova,” directed by
Harry Macqueen, unfolds in the Lake
District of Northern England, whereas
“Two of Us,” which marks the début of
a young Italian director, Filippo Me-
neghetti, was mostly filmed in the south-
ern French town of Montpellier and
thereabouts, and is distinctly lacking in
pastoral peace.
The sufferer, in “Supernova,” is Tusker
Rami Malek, Jared Leto, and Denzel Washington in John Lee Hancock’s film.
