Joey Magidson
There’s an inherent pleasure in watching a New York filmmaker play in the sandbox that is New York City. We’ve seen Spike Lee make many a film in the Big Apple before, to be sure, but Highest 2 Lowest represents the first time I’ve seen such joy coming from him in doing so. A lot of the fun that the movie generates is due to his shots of various aspects of NYC, which is saying something considering this also represents his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington. They’re both firing on all cylinders, too, making for a very easy watch.
Highest 2 Lowest is probably mid-level Lee, but there’s a playfulness on display that we don’t always get to see. His Academy Award, as well as elder statesman status in the industry, has allowed him to enter a new phase in his career. Mellow is never what you’d use to define Lee or one of his joints, but this flick has an occasional calmness that comes close to it. Even if it wasn’t quality cinema, it would be a curiosity. Luckily, it’s much more than that.
A reinterpretation of the Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, the story is updated to modern day New York City. David King (Washington) is a music industry mogul, a titan who is known to have the best ears in the business. He’s built his label from the ground up, though at one point in the past sold off part of his stake. Now, with a potential sale to a holding company in the works, he’s got plans to buy it all back and make it his own. This is news to his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), especially when she only finds out as she’s being told to hold off on their annual donation to a museum. David is a dedicated family man, madly in love still with Pam, as well as easily affectionate with their teenage son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). While dropping him off at a basketball clinic, Trey wants him to listen to a young artist he’s fond of, though David is singularly focused on his business. Racing off with his driver Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), he’s shocked later that day to learn that Trey has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Well, at least the kidnappers thought they grabbed Trey. It turns out, they mistakenly took Trey’s best friend and Paul’s son Kyle (Elijah Wright), who was also at the clinic. The thing is, the kidnappers still want the ransom, to the tune of $17.5 million, or they’ll kill Kyle. The King family was prepared to pay it to bring Trey home. Now, David hesitates.
Faced with this moral dilemma, David tries to rationalize why he shouldn’t pay, despite Paul’s begging. At the police work the case, the kidnappers, especially the one who keeps calling David, grow impatient. So David talks. He talks to his wife, to his son, to his business partner, to everyone, trying to figure out a way to not take the money meant to buy back his legacy and use it to rescue Kyle. What he ultimately decides, as well as how that unfolds, is best left to be discovered, but it’s only the start of what David will have to go through.
Denzel Washington is positively giddy to be playing this role for Lee, and it shows. Washington is able to convey David as both powerful and powerless, loving and cold, wise and foolish. It’s to his credit that you can see him doing it all so effortlessly, with the viewer reaping the benefits. He gets to go big at times, and have some real fun, so it’s a full meal for the legend. Jeffrey Wright is a little bit underserved at times, but when he gets to shine, boy does he ever. Ilfenesh Hadera and Aubrey Joseph do their best work opposite Washington, with the latter in particular having a showdown that proves quite memorable. In addition to the aforementioned Elijah Wright, the cast includes Rick Fox, Wendell Pierce, Michael Potts, A$AP Rocky, Ice Spice, Dean Winters, and more.
Spike Lee directs a screenplay from Alan Fox, which adapts both High and Low, as well as the Ed McBain novel King’s Ransom. The more things deviate from the source material and feel like a Spike Lee joint, the better. It’s when Fox and Lee feel like they need to be sticking to what’s come before that things feel less alive. Fox has some wonderful scenes for Washington and company to play in, but it’s Lee’s direction, as well as the cinematography from Matthew Libatique, that give everything its full life. Now, the movie does run ten to fifteen minutes too long and takes its sweet time ending, but before that you get a third act duel of sorts in the form of a rap battle featuring Washington’s character. You’re just not going to see that anywhere else. Plus, Lee’s feel for New York is just unmatched. You always know where in the city you are, with the neighborhoods positively coming alive.
Highest 2 Lowest has, excuse the pun, some highs and lows, and likely isn’t going to be a major Oscar contender, given its fairly populist feel, but overall it’s a very solid effort from Spike Lee that shows an auteur in full control of his powers. While the central mystery isn’t too hard to figure out, the interpersonal relationships and morality play on display is first rate. Allowed to do his thing in New York City, Lee proves once again that he’s one of the leading storytellers of the Big Apple.
SCORE: ★★★
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