Review: 'The Little Things' is one big mess, in spite of three Oscar winners filling out this sleazy serial-killer movie

On a scale of one to “Se7en,” “The Little Things” barely rates a three.

Writer-director John Lee Hancock peddles many of the tropes of David Fincher’s famous serial-killer police procedural — with an old cop working with a young cop, trying to outwit a seemingly implacable madman. But in trying to duplicate that movie’s moral ambiguity, Hancock just produces a muddled mess.

Set in Los Angeles in 1990, the story follows Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington), known as “Deke” to his friends — of which he doesn’t have too many these days. Deke’s a deputy in a rural California jurisdiction, sent by his boss to collect some evidence being held by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, a couple hours’ drive away.

Deke still has some friends in the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, where he worked as a detective a few years earlier — that is, until a case that, according to his old boss, Capt. Carl Farris (Terry Kinney), led to his suspension, a divorce and a triple bypass. Deke looks up some old acquaintances, but he also listens in as a young detective, Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), tries to reassure the press that the serial-killer case that’s terrorizing the L.A. area will be solved.

Despite warnings from Farris, Baxter seeks advice on the case from Deke — who sees parallels between this killer and the case that abruptly ended his LASD career. Soon, Deke is riding shotgun with Baxter, helping the ambitious young detective track down leads and try to make a case against a creepy guy named Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), who seems to be having too much fun toying with Baxter and Deke.

With three Oscar-winning actors and some luridly sensuous images of Los Angeles captured by cinematographer John Schwartzman (“Seabiscuit”), Hancock — who directed “Saving Mr. Banks” and “The Blind Side,” among others — should be able to knock this one out with little effort. Alas, his script is riddled with ham-fisted plot mechanics, a flashback structure that telegraphs the movie’s punches, and (no spoilers here) an ending in which the filmmaker thumbs his nose at every police-reform argument we have heard in the last few years.

Washington and Malek have some nice moments together in “The Little Things,” two generations of actors trying to bring some gravitas to a sleazy police drama. But they’re thwarted by that stink-bomb ending, which demonstrated that sometimes it’s not the little things but one big thing that destroys a movie.

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‘The Little Things’

★1/2

Opens Friday, January 29, in theaters where open, and streams on HBO Max. Rated R for violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity. Running time: 127 minutes.

Review: 'No Man's Land' is a border thriller that takes an intriguing turn into a redemption drama

Like the Rio Grande that’s a central feature of the story, director Conor Allyn’s “No Man’s Land” has some twists and turns in it, delivering more emotional weight than first impressions would suggest.

The title refers to a stretch of real estate along the Rio Grande, between the river and the U.S. border fence. It’s an area where migrants cross over into the States from Mexico. It’s also where the Greer family runs a small cattle ranch, and deals with migrants walking through their land and disturbing the cattle.

Bill Greer (Frank Grillo) and his wife, Monica (Andie MacDowell), try to keep the ranch financially afloat, aided by their sons, Lucas (Alex MacNicoll) and Jackson (Jake Allyn, who co-wrote the script with David Barraza). Jackson has a way out of ranch life: A 92 mph fastball and a chance to join the Yankees’ AA farm team.

On the other side of the river, Gustavo (Jorge A. Jimenez), who has the nickname “Shepherd” because of his faith, is trying to get his 11-year-old son, Fernando (Alessio Valentini), over the border.

One night, the two families have an encounter, as Bill and Lucas try to retrieve some wayward cattle, and find Gustavo’s group trying to traverse the desert. One kid with Gustavo’s group pulls a knife, there’s a struggle for Bill’s rifle — and Jackson unexpectedly ends up in the middle of it. When the dust has settled, Lucas has been shot in the gut, and Jake has killed little Fernando.

One might think this is the jumping-off point for a revenge thriller, a kill-or-be-killed struggle between Jake and Gustavo. Instead, something more interesting happens: Jake rides off into Mexico, toward the city of Guanajuato, in an effort to find Gustavo and atone for what he’s done.

Jake’s journey is a rough one, across the Mexican desert. He finds help along the way, working as a laborer for a prosperous rancher (Juan Carlos Remolina). And he experiences Mexico, learning that the bigoted information he inherited from Bill is not accurate. Jake also has a violent thug, Luis (Andrés Delgado), and a Texas Ranger, Ramirez (George Lopez), on his trail.

Some of the characterizations, particularly of Jake and the family who takes him in, are well-drawn and compelling — people with whom you’d like to sit around a big dinner table and just talk all night. Alas, other characters, like the nasty Luis, are cardboard cutouts of humanity, repositories for every screenwriting cliche that comes to mind.

The Allyn’s have a lot working for them: A strong cast, a good sense of storytelling, and an eye for rugged landscapes. “No Man’s Land” doesn’t pretend it’s solving the problems along the U.S./Mexico border, but it gives all sides a chance to be heard, which is enough.

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‘No Man’s Land’

★★★

Opens Friday, January 22, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for some strong violence and language. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'The Marksman' is a straight-forward thriller, with Liam Neeson getting progressively craggier

Despite its head-fake toward current-events relevance, “The Marksman” is a serviceable road thriller that demonstrates that Liam Neeson is slowly, inexorably, morphing into Clint Eastwood.

Neeson plays Jim Hansen, an Arizona rancher whose property abuts the U.S./Mexican border fence. In quick strokes, we learn that Jim is: a) in arrears on his ranch, due to the medical bills of his late wife; b) a retired Marine who’s quite handy with his sharpshooter’s rifle; c) equipped with a walkie-talkie with a direct signal to the U.S. Border Patrol; d) an alcoholic; and e) the stepfather of a Border Patrol detective, Sarah (Katheryn Winnick).

One day, a Mexican woman, Rosa (Teresa Ruiz), and her 11-year-old son, Miguel (Jacob Perez), come through the border fence, right in front of Jim’s pick-up truck. Jim gets on his walkie and calls the Border Patrol. Before they arrive, a Mexican drug cartel boss, Mauricio (Juan Pablo Raba), drives up to the fence, ordering Jim to give Rosa and Miguel back across. Jim refuses, and guns start going off — and soon Rosa is dead, and Jim is tasked with getting a reluctant Miguel to family in Chicago.

Of course, Mauricio and his goons aren’t going to make Jim and Miguel’s drive up Route 66 an easy one. The reason may have to do with the big bag of money Rosa was carrying before she died. With high-tech tools and an army of thugs, Mauricio traces Jim’s path through his credit card — and leaves a bloody trail as he pursues Jim and Miguel.

Director Robert Lorenz (who directed Eastwood in the baseball drama “Trouble With the Curve”), who co-wrote the script with Chris Charles and Danny Kravitz, creates scenes that are functional without being flashy. They’re not great cinema, but they move the story along to its expected destination.

There are attempts to make Miguel a stand-in for several hot-button issues — namely, the Mexicans who seek asylum to escape the violence of the drug cartels — but never with enough conviction to be anything more than an interesting plot point.

Neeson carries the bulk of “The Marksman” with gravel-voiced sincerity and an Old West “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” demeanor. It’s the sort of role Clint Eastwood used to do in his sleep, and Neeson is quickly proving to be Eastwood’s heir apparent for gruff, aging tough guys. 

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‘The Marksman’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 15, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images and brief strong language. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: In 'Outside the Wire," a military officer meets an android warrior, but the sparks never fly.

One thing a viewer never need worry about during the future-set war thriller “Outside the Wire” is not knowing what’s happening in the plot — because someone, usually star Anthony Mackie, will stop in his tracks to explain it, over and over again, stopping the action dead.

Convoluted only in the sense that no one will care to follow it, “Outside the Wire” begins in the year 2036 with Lt. Thomas Harp (Damson Idris), a self-assured drone pilot who fires missiles into combat situations with calm assurance, from the relative comfort of a military base in Nevada. On one such drone strike, he fires into a shooting situation and kills two Marines — though Harp defends his actions, under the cold calculation that he saved the other 38 Marines on that mission.

Instead of a court-martial, Harp is sent to the war zone where his drone was flying, deep in Ukraine. In the combat area, oversized battle robots, called Gumps, accompany human troops on missions, mostly to maintain an uneasy truce between a rebel group and a shadowy warlord, Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbaek, from “Game of Thrones”). Harp is assigned to work with Capt. Leo (Anthony Mackie), who is running a stealth mission to deliver vaccines to a field hospital outside the American military perimeter.

Harp quickly learns two things about Leo. One is that the vaccine mission is a cover for his true purpose, which is to hunt down Koval. The second, which actually comes first, is that Leo is an android, a next-generation robot soldier who can think independently of military constraints. Leo can also smile, laugh, hurl insults and swear like Samuel L. Jackson on a snake-filled plane.

Director Michael Håfström (“Escape Plan,” “The Rite”), working off a hash of a script by Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe, ploddingly alternates between talky exposition scenes and hamfisted action sequences that are bloody enough to make one realize Leo never read Asimov’s First Law of Robotics — “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm” — and certainly never read my First Law of Action Movies: Don’t be boring.

The most interesting aspect of “Outside the Wire” is a late-innings plot twist that would only be shocking if the movie ever encouraged the audience to connect in any way with Leo or Harp. As much as Mackie aims to bring some authenticity to his android character, this movie is as lifeless as a switched-off robot.

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‘Outside the Wire’

★★

Available for streaming Friday, January 15, on Netflix. Rated R for strong violence and language throughout. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: In thought-provoking 'One Night in Miami,' Regina King shows she's right at home in the director's chair

After watching her in her Emmy-winning role in “Watchmen” and her Oscar-winning performance in “If Beale Street Could Talk” — and now, with her feature directing debut, “One Night in Miami” — I am convinced that Regina King can do anything.

Appoint her Attorney General. Let her quarterback the Jets. Put her on “The Masked Singer.” Whatever it is, she can do it, and brilliantly.

Here, King and screenwriter Kemp Powers (“Soul”), adapting his own stage play, imagine the conversation that occurred before one of the most famous photos of 1964. The photo was taken in a Miami diner, after Muhammad Ali — when he was still using the name Cassius Clay — celebrated taking the heavyweight title in a match against Sonny Liston. Attending this impromptu party were the football icon Jim Brown, the singer Sam Cooke, and the activist Malcolm X.

Before this photo was taken, we find Malcolm (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) preparing his hotel room to meet the other three men. They think they’re going to a party, but Malcolm has something else in mind: A conversation about how these icons can use their status to further the cause of Black liberation.

Most of Malcolm’s attention is focused on Cooke (played by Leslie Odom Jr.), a popular singer who should, in Malcolm’s view, be using his music to further the cause — not singing sappy love songs like “You Send Me.” Cooke argues back that, as a Black entrepreneur, he’s doing his part for his people, like making sure the Black artists he manages get proper royalties when The Rolling Stones covers one of their songs.

While Brown (Aldis Hodge) looks on with amusement, and talks about his side career of getting into the movies, Malcolm also wants a word with Clay (Eli Goree). Malcolm has been guiding Clay on his path to converting to Islam, but hasn’t told the future Ali that he’s had a falling-out with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad.

King maintains the contours of the stage origins of Powers’ story — most of the “action” is confined to Malcolm’s small hotel room, and consists of heartfelt, sometimes contentious, dialogue among the quartet. That’s not a handicap here, and King as a director isn’t afraid to let ideas and words propel the drama. King also expands outside that hotel room, with some visually striking moments, in the boxing ring with Clay or on “The Tonight Show” with Cooke, among others.

King also trusts her actors, and they repay that trust tenfold. Ben-Adir bottles the intellectual intensity of Malcolm X, both as an agitator trying to provoke Cooke and a counselor to Clay in his spiritual journey. Odom (“Hamilton”) gets the showiest role, singing in Cooke’s style but also embodying the showman’s smoothness. Goree captures Clay’s ebullient confidence, and the anger bubbling underneath it. Hodge makes Brown a cool observer, more thoughtful than one expects from a football player.

Together, the four actors bring Powers’ dialogue to full life, guided by King’s light but sure hand, posing big questions about Black identity and reactions to systemic racism. They make “One Night in Miami” an exhilarating, thought-provoking experience that’s as vital now as it was would have been in 1964

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‘One Night in Miami’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 8, in select theaters, including Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan) and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi); available for streaming starting Friday, January 15, on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 114 minutes.

Review: 'Herself' is a warm, winning Irish drama, and a star-making turn for actor/writer Clare Dunne

The Irish domestic drama “Herself” is a big-hearted and inspirational story of resilience and motherly love — and a grand global introduction of actor/writer Clare Dunne.

Dunne — who has story credit and co-wrote the screenplay with Malcolm Campbell — plays Sandra White, a Dublin mother who we first see playing with her young daughters, Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) and Molly (Molly McCann). That brief happiness is shattered when Sandra’s husband, Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) comes home, sends the children away, and then savagely beats Sandra. This isn’t the first time, we know, because Sandra and Emma have a secret code to call the police.

The story cuts to some time later, with Sandra and the girls living in a hotel near the Dublin airport, subsidized by welfare — and even then, Sandra is working in a bar and cleaning a woman’s house to make ends meet. Finding a new apartment is impossible, even with rent vouchers, but she’s determined that she’s not going to return to Gary.

While juggling jobs, and a custody schedule with Gary, Sandra comes across a potential solution to her housing problem: A self-built mini-house. She can’t get the city welfare office to help, but gets an unexpected offer from Peggy (Harriet Walter), the doctor whose house Sandra cleans: Free land in Peggy’s backyard, and a loan to pay for the house materials. Sandra even finds a retired contractor, Aido (Conleth Hill, from “Game of Thrones”), to oversee construction.

Director Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!,” “The Iron Lady”) doesn’t shy away from Sandra’s pain as an abused spouse or a poverty-stricken mom. But Lloyd doesn’t let Sandra or the movie wallow in the misery, either. This is a story about Sandra’s resolve and survival skills, as she battles bureaucracy and her own self-doubt to make a better life for herself and her daughters — and, almost by accident, discovering a community of friends who support her dream.

Dunne gives a tender, yet intense, portrayal of Sandra, a woman finally driven to leave her abusive husband and strong enough to handle the consequences of that decision. Dunne, in writing herself a plum role, gives “Herself” a warm glow generated from an emotional melodrama that’s never pandering and always true to its heart.

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‘Herself’

★★★1/2

Available for streaming starting Friday, January 8, on Prime video; now playing at Megaplex Valley Fair (West Valley City). Rated R for language and some domestic violence. Running time: 97 minutes.

Review: 'Pieces of a Woman' is one intense scene and a lot of cheap melodrama, all enlivened by Vanessa Kirby's performance

The drama “Pieces of a Woman” starts with one of the most harrowing scenes in recent memory —  so strong it won Vanessa Kirby a best-actress award at the Venice Film Festival and has her in the Oscar conversation.

But it’s all downhill after that, an average marital melodrama that can’t match that opening.

Kirby plays Martha, a successful executive who seems to have it all: A well-paying job, a luxury Boston apartment, and a good husband in Sean (Shia LaBeouf), a construction foreman on a major bridge project. And Martha and Sean are about to become first-time parents. 

Then comes that great high-wire act of a scene, a single-take 24-minute sequence that begins with Martha having contractions and Sean calling their midwife, who says she’s busy with another birth — so a substitute midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), arrives to assist in the home birth. By the end of that 24 minutes, Martha has given birth to her baby daughter, but then something goes horribly wrong.

Everything that follows in Kata Wéber’s script stems from that moment, and how the people around Martha — Sean, her sister Anita (Iliza Shlesinger), and her stern mother, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn) — don’t understand why she seems so emotionless in the wake of her tragedy. In the process, other problems that were submerged during Martha’s pregnancy flare up, including marital infidelity and Elizabeth’s long-simmering dislike of Sean.

These moments feel like they were cribbed from a weak TV melodrama, though with really good actors trying to milk something authentic from them. Kirby meets that acting challenge, tightly controlled and precise through all of Martha’s unfathomable grief and barely contained rage. But that early scene, where Kirby simulates childbirth and the rollercoaster of feelings that come from it, is a masterclass of in-the-moment acting.

Director Kornél Mundruczó (who worked with Wéber on the 2014 Hungarian canine thriller “White God”) provides a lush visual backdrop for Kirby and her costars to shine — and deploys Sean’s bridge project as a recurring metaphor for the span of time.

But there’s only so much Mundruczó or Kirby can do with the bargain-basement plot contrivances — including a rousing courtroom scene near the finish — that drag “Pieces of a Woman” down after the spectacular work at the beginning.

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‘Pieces of a Woman’

★★1/2

Available for streaming, starting Thursday, January 7, on Netflix; now playing at Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City). Rated R for language, sexual content, graphic nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 126 minutes.

Review: 'I Blame Society' an uneven mock-documentary horror story, but a good introduction to filmmaker Gillian Wallace Horvat

A Hollywood satire that isn’t as cutting as it wants to be, the mock-documentary “I Blame Society” nonetheless suggests first-time director Gillian Wallace Horvat is a filmmaker to watch out for — in more ways than one.

Horvat plays a variation of herself, a struggling filmmaker who can’t find a way into the hearts and minds of producers who tell her that her screenplay’s lead female character isn’t likable enough. When a couple of friends make an offhanded comment that she’d make a good murderer, Horvat decides the’ll make a documentary where she plots out the perfect murder.

In the opening scene, Horvat presents her plan to her friend Chase (played by Chase Williamson, Horvat’s co-screenwriter) — because Horvat’s intended target is Chase’s girlfriend, whom Horvat dislikes so much she’s given the girlfriend the nickname “Stalin.” Chase is repulsed, and cuts off ties with Gillian.

Flash-forward three years, and an underemployed Horvat, now with a film-editor boyfriend, Keith (Keith Poulson), decides to revisit the perfect-murder film idea. She decides some practice crimes — like a breaking-and-entering on an actress (Jennifer Kim) she sees on the street — will be a good warm-up for a murder. Then, after accidentally killing someone and getting away with it, she develops a taste for blood.

Horvat makes an intriguing argument — that killers and filmmakers both must be organized, detail-oriented and a little ruthless — and she displays the lo-fi cinematic chops to keep the faux-documentary format rolling longer than one might otherwise expect. The movie loses steam, though, in the final half-hour, as the body count and Horvat’s to-the-camera rationalizations get bigger and bloodier.

At the risk of sounding like the shallow Hollywood “suits” that Horvat skewers, “I Blame Society” is interesting and shows a lot of potential — but it didn’t grab me.

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‘I Blame Society’

★★1/2

Available starting Friday, January 8, at virtual cinemas, including SLFS@Home. Not rated, but probably R for violence, gore, some sexuality, nudity, and language. Running time: 84 minutes.