Nassima Heile

*SPOILERS* To begin with, Jared Leto, Rami Malek, and Denzel Washington gave phenomenal performances that I genuinely appreciated. My grievances with this film are purely regarding the writing. I love watching a movie that doesn't spoon feed you every clue and piece of information pertaining to the plot, but jesus christ you have to give me something to at least keep me intriuged. The film has a strong start, lots of foreshadowing and I love the classic 90's feel the movie has. I want to bring up their first suspect, the peeping tom they found who lives in the first victim's building. They bring him in for an interogation and Detective Deacon has Detective Baxter bring up the name of a girl. Mary? Something like that, and after the peeping tom hears this girl's name he starts crying and we find out later he killed himself that night. Why did they never explain the importance of that? Why did the peeping tom take his own life over hearing a girl's name? I feel like the writer just forgot about that scene. Furthermore, I understand that there is supposed to be confusion about whether or not Albert Sparma is the killer, hence the red berette dilemma. I don't dislike that idea, but in my opinion it was executed poorly. They also give a clue by showing beer in Sparma's fridge, similar to the beer found in the victim's fridge. That idea is a bit far fetched, as many people drink beer, so I could never imagine that holding up in court. I can also appreciate the parallelism between the two main detectives. They both commit murder, have had the same grueling job, both have two daughters, and it seems Baxter's marriage slowly falls apart throughout the film, similar to the multiple mentions of Deacon's divorce. I think a better ending would have been if it was revealed Detective Baxter was actually the killer. All of his outbursts, clearly showing signs of uncontrollable aggression. Also, when Deacon does the tag line, "It's the little things, Jimmy. It's the little things that get you caught." Detective Baxter looks genuinely frightened he is going to be the one who is caught. Instead, the writer decided to have Baxter kill Sparma. Lame. So many different directions and endings this movie could have had and you choose the most boring one. Undeniably wasted potential to get three award winning actors to work together on one project and make it the most boring film of the year. You could literally leave halfway during the film and get the same feeling you do when you walk out of the theater after wasting two hours of your life. So much time in this movie is wasted on pointless small talk dialogue and watching Denzel Washington and Rami Malek stare into space. On the topic of dialogue, there are some points where you can barely hear what is being said. Looks like the sound designer knew this was a piece of trash and wanted to spare us. In the end, it is not the little things that get you caught, it's Rami Malek beating you over the head with a shovel.