The star’s reliable presence can’t save a drab, self-important procedural that can’t quite decide if it wants to be thrilling or thoughtful
There’s a self-serious portent to the drab serial killer thriller The Little Things, a smug sense of grandiosity informing us that it’s not only more substantial than the average stalk-n-stab schlock, but that it’s going somewhere we might not expect, ending with gravity rather than gristle. To its credit, the film, from The Blind Side writer-director John Lee Hancock, does find itself in slightly unconventional territory in its rushed finale but it’s not a place that’s either satisfying or smart enough to warrant the hushed solemnity that precedes it. It’s a film trapped between a low- and a highbrow version of a story we know all too well, landing firmly in the middle of the road.
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