Review: Highest 2 Lowest

Director:  Spike Lee

Stars:  A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Denzel Washington

David King (Denzel Washington) vibes on a nighttime drive with his close friend and underling Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright) to the rolling grooves of James Brown. “The Boss” is playing. Of course this is David’s jam; he is The Boss. CEO of Stackin’ Hits Records, David and his family live high above the Brooklyn Bridge, in a penthouse suite, lords and masters of all they survey. Or near enough.

In truth David is fighting off a deal to buyout his company which would see his empire stripped for parts to school AI songwriting. Because of this he hasn’t had as much time of late for his loving wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) or the requests of his 17-year-old son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). But when Trey is kidnapped and held ransom to the tune of $17.5mil, David sits up and takes notice. The dilemma is further complicated when it transpires that, in his haste, the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky) snatched the wrong son, and is holding Paul’s boy, Kyle (Elijah Wright). 

Spike Lee has a storied history with remakes, having previously taken on the exalted likes of Park Chan-Wook and Bill Gunn, so news of his intent to restage Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low didn’t exactly raise the roof. To his credit, the story – reworked from the novel “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain – fits New York like a glove, and gives Lee a further opportunity to present his feted city as only he can. Highest 2 Lowest is never better than when Lee pulls back from the family drama to position it within his beloved metropolis. Particularly rousing is the mid-film money exchange; still staged aboard a roaring train, but here snaking over and under a festival celebrating Puerto Rican heritage as crowds amass for a Yankees game. But Lee’s love for NYC is everywhere, evidenced in the romantic views afforded the King family by their luxury home. This is his most overt tribute since 25th Hour. 

But if there’s a subject here Lee loves more, it’s Denzel. Where High and Low was constructed as a diptych, passing from Toshirō Mifune’s Kingo Gondo to Tatsuya Nakadai’s Detective Tokura for the dragnet procedural of it’s second half, Lee is loath to leave his leading man. Denzel is fidgety and performative as David, exuding a largess. While keeping with the Kings strengthens the emotional through-line of Highest 2 Lowest, it does mean that subsidiary characters set up along the way get short shrift. This feels particularly true of the movie’s potential MVP John Douglas Thompson, who is incredibly engaging as Nakadai’s equivalent, Detective Earl Bridges. 

A$AP Rocky’s work as kidnapper and failing rapper Yung Felon doesn’t get a look-in til very near the end of the picture, but its heartening to see the energy and verve he brings, going toe-to-toe with Washington. One confrontation feels part-rap battle, part-Shakespearian challenge. You can feel Lee contending with the vast legacy of Kurosawa in this scene. It’s playful.

Legacy creeps into Highest 2 Lowest in other ways. One can quite readily imprint Lee onto David King; a seasoned mogul whose view of the young upstarts – even his fans – has calcified over the years. There’s paranoia here about losing connection with the art that meant so much in the first place, obscured over the years by the costs of doing business. The film’s wholly inessential and protracted final scene feels like Lee trying to prove (to himself as much as anyone else) that he can still connect with the generations following him up the ladder.

It evidences a lack of discipline that sometimes weighs Highest 2 Lowest down. Lee and screenwriter Alex Fox have made this story their own, but not quite wrestled it into a tight form that can compete with Lee’s (significant) career highs. Howard Drossin’s music encapsulates the unevenness. In montage sequences his overscoring soars; during quieter dialogue scenes, it smothers and meanders.

Lee remains rather charmingly divorced from subtlety (of course someone here lives in apartment ‘A24’). Highest 2 Lowest feels nostalgic for a kind of mid-budget New York thriller we’re rarely offered these days by Hollywood, and it’s heartening that – even when doffing his cap to titans like Kurosawa – Lee is still Lee through-and-through.

But, man, he hates Boston.