Jared Leto | Screenlife Reviews

Giving Ridley Scott the keys to the Gucci story – a wild tale of family, betrayal and murder – should have made for one of the most arresting crime capers of the veteran director’s career. After all this is the man who gave us Gladiator, American Gangster and just this year The Last Duel. The result therefore is as baffling as it is frustrating; House of Gucci may just be Scott’s most bizarre film to date – a tonally jarring mishmash of humour and intense drama that does neither particularly successfully thanks to some truly horrendous performances and a painfully slow pace that somehow manages to also feel as if it is rushing through its dense narrative.

When working class Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) runs into heir to the Gucci fashion fortune Maurizio (Adam Driver), she senses that her fortunes are about to change, latching onto the man who is intent on becoming a lawyer and leaving his family’s business behind. When Maurizio introduces his new girlfriend to his hotheaded father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), he senses Patrizia’s less than honourable intentions, cutting his son off from the fortune and ceasing all contact as Maurizio assumes a less glamorous, but fulfilling life with his new bride.

But when Maurizio’s boisterous uncle Aldo (a fantastic Al Pacino) learns of his brother and nephew’s estrangement he makes it his mission to bring Maurizio and Patrizia back into the fold, offering him a lucrative job at Gucci and indoctrinating Patrizia into a life of luxury she could only have dreamt of. As Patrizia’s manipulation of Maurizio into taking the reigns of Gucci becomes more and more damaging to the rest of the family, including Aldo’s dimwitted son Paolo (Jared Leto), she is forced to consider desperate measures to stop the monster she helped create.

What immediately stands out about House of Gucci is the Italian accents. Everyone in the film attempts them, largely to godawful results outside of Al Pacino, and it is the first sign that something is not quite right. By and large it doesn’t stop the genuinely good performances of Adam Driver or Jeremy Irons from shining through but in Jared Leto’s case it turns what seems to be Scott making a serious attempt at telling this story in dramatic fashion into a farcical mess. Swathed in prosthetics and make-up, Leto completely loses himself in the character of Paolo. Unfortunately that character plays as more of a Mario Brother than a convincing human being, with Leto’s offensively stereotypical Italian accent taking the character to levels of parody the rest of the film is not prepared to follow. Every time his dimwitted, fat-suit laden character appears on-screen you can guarantee that the scene will devolve into unintentional hilarity, often at the expense of genuinely compelling dialogue or a pivotal beat, forgotten in the wake of Leto’s ridiculousness.

The film’s overall forgetfulness is also compounded by the strange pacing decisions Scott makes in his telling of Maurizio and Patrizia’s story. The introduction to these characters feels incredibly rushed, with them meeting and together within the opening fifteen minutes. We never get a reasonable amount of time to establish the characters or reason why we should care about them other than their functions within the story; Gaga as the manipulative temptress seeking status and Driver the unwitting cog in her plan, forced to betray his family for power and getting swept up in the allure of that power himself.

Once this dynamic is established Scott meanders through the inner workings of Patrizia’s long con, which mostly involves displays of exorbitant wealth and the obvious journey through Gucci’s fashionable history. Sure we get the impression that these characters are slowly transforming through their experiences, but once again Scott rushes the sudden switch Driver undergoes into monstrous business owner and Gaga’s sudden departure from that world, culminating in a finale that should be a lot more impactful than it is, with Scott keeping the audience at an arms length from his characters at all times; never allowing us to form any meaningful connection to them.

Much has been made of Gaga’s performance but she only narrowly escapes the same issues as Leto, her accent constantly wavering between an exaggerated Italian and Russian as she hams it up every chance she gets. Whenever a scene skews particularly dramatic or “awards-worthy” Gaga goes berserk, rarely giving anyone else in the scene a chance to go back and forth as she commands the room, regardless of the context of the conversation. It’s a distracting method of acting that undermines these important scenes, where Gaga could have benefitted from a “less is more” approach she almost always pivots the other way, regardless of how that affects the scene. For someone who schemed and plotted from the shadows as Patrizia Reggiano did, there never seems to be much quiet intensity in Gaga’s performance, replaced by a need to shine and exaggerate even the most imperceptible traits.

House of Gucci is a strange anomaly in Ridley Scott’s filmography; a concept that on paper looks suited to his particular talent for complex, intense storytelling but which in practicality devolves into a messy, haphazardly paced jumble of poor accents and jarring tonal shifts. It almost feels like Scott on autopilot; a perfunctory telling of a story that could have been a gripping, steadily intensifying examination of a family on the way to a breakdown. Instead we’re left with a film that will at best gain a cult following for Jared Leto’s hilariously bad performance and at worst fade from collective consciousness.

House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Jack Huston & Salma Hayek – In cinemas now.

4/10

Three academy award winning actors in a prestige crime drama directed by the man behind The Blind Side and Saving Mr Banks should be one of the best films of the year. Especially when one of those actors is the great Denzel Washington, one of the finest working in Hollywood today. Yet John Lee Hancock’s meandering serial killer investigation The Little Things never hits the potential afforded to it by its cast (Rami Malek and Jared Leto round out the key trio), stumbling through the glacially-paced case without any sense of urgency; its intriguing central mystery constantly overshadowed by the uninteresting, boring inter-personal problems of the police uncovering it. The calibre of talent keep you on-board even throughout the most sleep-inducing stretches, but not even Washington can redeem the unfulfilling ending, which relies on shock value to mask unfinished story threads.

The film immediately evokes comparisons to David Fincher’s Se7en – perhaps the greatest serial killer film of all time – through its central relationship between grizzled veteran cop Joe Deacon (Washington) and rising star detective Jim Baxter (Malek), who has taken over Joe’s position in his old LA precinct. Assigned by his commanding officer to retrieve key evidence from his old digs, Deacon is swept up in Baxter’s investigation into a recent string of murders of young women, all of whom have had been mutilated in ways similar to a case from Deacon’s past, the result of which remains a mystery. Unlike Se7en however – where the relationship was built on an uneasy alliance of respect, self-preservation and a morbid obsession with the case – Deacon and Baxter’s relationship is much less fleshed out, based on pure happenstance and luck. The initial hostility between the pair paints an interesting picture of a tenuous partnership; an alliance borne out of necessity, before quickly dissolving into a friendship that stems from nothing other than a vague, unearned sense of respect for the man Baxter replaced, enforced by the older cops around the station. The pair never really bond in a meaningful way other than brief conversations about the case and snide, macho jabs at one another, and when later events threaten to shake that bond, you are forced to question just how strong it can be when the pair have only been working together for a single day.

That leads to The Little Things’ biggest problem: the characterisation of its leads in a film that truly believes its characters are more interesting than the plot. Denzel does what he can, with a lot of long stares and pained looks giving you insight into the demons that haunt him; the lingering psychological effects of the case that seemingly cost him his former life. It seems at times that he is on autopilot, rolling out the same old mannerisms and line deliveries that made him a star. Obviously that is still amazing when you’re a man of Washington’s talent but it would have been nice to see him bring more vulnerability and genuine fear to the role, rather than a clichéd world-weariness and somewhat dubious lust for revenge that doesn’t gel with his otherwise laidback demeanour. Rami Malek’s performance, on the other hand, is excruciatingly stiff and unemotional, to the point where you are unsure whether it is a red herring to insinuate that he could in fact be the killer or if his acting is just bad (Spoiler Alert: it’s the latter). When the script calls for big flashy emotional moments from him they don’t land at all, feeling hollow and contrived rather than from a genuine understanding of the role. That poor performance is compounded when the weight of the film’s emotional impact shifts onto Baxter, highlighting an already boring performance as a glaring problem that robs the film of much of its impact.

Thankfully Jared Leto’s brilliantly creepy Albert Sparma provides some intrigue. Leto is phenomenal as the wannabe crime buff who seems by all accounts to be the prime suspect if for nothing else than his bizarre willingness to be held responsible for the crimes, with nothing firmly tying him to any of the murders. Channelling that manic energy from Suicide Squad – more weird on-set shenanigans than his turn as the Joker – Sparma is a cold and unwelcoming presence, acutely aware that he is being pursued by Deacon and Baxter and relishing every second of it, playing mind-games on the two detectives and frustrating the living hell out of them. The interactions between Sparma, Deacon and Baxter are the most compelling moments of the film, finally supplying some progress to the case that never feels like it is ever going anywhere with rising tensions and emotions threatening to bubble over as the long nights begin to take their toll on the detectives. However for a film with such an interesting killer at its centre, The Little Things never truly seems concerned with exploring the crime itself. Sure Deacon and Baxter are investigating it and Sparma inserts himself in the process but there is always a sense that Baxter is more concerned with his career and that Joe is only concerned with revenge. These two thinly drawn individuals just aren’t compelling enough together to justify the inconclusiveness the finale leaves you with. The audience simply doesn’t care enough about them for Hancock to forego a conclusion to the case in favour of making a moral stand. For majority of the film, Baxter and Deacon’s dialogue consists of clichéd drivel – back and forth about who owes who breakfast – instead of meaningful development that makes them feel like anything other than cookie cutter cop stereotypes.

Unlike its name, The Little Things is a big disappointment, with a talented director and his team of terrific actors unable to make the most of a concept that could have been a riveting companion piece to Se7en. Instead what we’re given is a stale, tiresome investigation into a genuinely compelling case that places next to no focus on the actual murders, choosing to waste its time on conventional characters who just aren’t interesting. For his part, Leto adds a genuinely creepy presence that lifts you out of the doldrums but it is too little too late to save Washington and Malek’s stereotypical detectives from their bland fate. A lazy Sunday afternoon watch perhaps or just a skip altogether – you won’t miss much if you don’t sweat the little things.

The Little Things stars Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Chris Bauer, Natalie Morales & Jared Leto – In Australian cinemas February 18th and in US cinemas and streaming for a limited time on HBO Max now.