Spike Lee never hesitates to show you how eclectic he feels his taste to be. If you think you’ve got a hold on his influences, his passions, he will then open his latest film, Highest 2 Lowest, with a credits sequence that plays, in full, “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin”, the opening song of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!. It’s a telling, ostentatious choice, and the first hint in the film that Spike finally sees himself as a member of the old school, a traditionalist, fearful of what the future promises in entertainment, particularly Black entertainment. Some of those fears are warranted (AI is an existential threat not only to the performing arts, but also human life as it currently exists), but others feel like bogeymen that Spike has cooked up in his imagination.
Highest 2 Lowest is a remake of the Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low, which itself was based on the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain. Kurosawa’s film is a taut morality play about post-war Japan, and a fierce rebuke of the social class structures of its time. Lee’s remake has similar ideas and the same plot structure, but his film takes place (of course) in New York City. Denzel Washington is a music mogul named David King. David’s greatest triumphs were in the early 2000s, where he was blessed with a reputation for having “the best ears in the business”. Developing talent was his passion, bringing up young Black artists to achieve the same rags-to-riches narrative arc that he had. These days, David is no longer the majority owner in his own company, Stackin’ Hits Records, and he’s on the verge of a total sale that will bring him a major payday.
David is already scheming ways to buy back his company for himself instead, preferring artistic integrity over exorbitant wealth. This includes buying out his original partner, Patrick (Michael Potts), and taking a loan out on his Brooklyn penthouse, possibly selling some of his priceless art and vacation property. He can get the money together, it will just take a little bit of work. The moment after he convinces his devoted wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), that it’s all worth it, he gets a call that puts the breaks on everything. A menacing voice explains that his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), was just kidnapped from a local basketball camp, and is being held for a $17.5 million ransom. David immediately calls the police who send Det. Earl Bridges (John Douglas Thompson) to steward the tense negotiation. David and Pam agree they will pay whatever it takes to get Trey back, and tell Det. Bridges so.
If you’ve seen High and Low, then you know that the real conundrum occurs when it’s revealed that Trey wasn’t kidnapped after all, but Trey’s close friend Kyle (Elijah Wright), whom the kidnappers take by mistake. Kyle is the son of Paul (Jeffrey Wright), David’s own close friend and chauffeur. Paul, a former convict, becomes apoplectic when he realizes what’s actually happening, and suddenly David’s insistence on paying the money is on pause. This is the money David wanted to use to buy back Stackin’ Hits and paying the ransom certainly jeopardizes all of that. Facing pressure from everyone, David searches his soul, debating what he should do. If you’ve seen High and Low, you know where his decision ultimately falls, and you also know that the movie ends up stretching on long after that decision is made. Highest 2 Lowest‘s second half becomes something of an action film – giving Lee the chance to make the high stakes drama he wanted to make to begin with.
On its face, David King feels like a Sean Combs or Russell Simmons type, but it doesn’t take too long to figure that Lee is actually making a film about himself. Specifically, this is him pondering his decades-long cultural influence, his ascension to the elite. Has he lost touch with young, working class, Black artists? There’s an ambivalence all around. For the most part, Lee appears to scratch his chin and decide “No, it’s the children who are wrong”. I’m partly being facetious, but only partly. The film’s depiction of teenagers (in particular, what teenagers care about) is filled with pat platitudes about the encroaching influence of social media with little other coloring. In a pivotal sequence, David enters his son’s room to reveal that Trey has a huge Kamala Harris poster on his wall, a pretty glaring red flag that Lee isn’t exactly interacting with anybody much under the age of 40.
**Spoiler Alert** for those uninterested in learning plot points that are actively discussed in the trailer. David’s battle with the younger generation is most literalized in his confrontation with Archie (A$AP Rocky), a young rapper who is revealed to be Kyle’s kidnapper. Archie courted David’s guidance, wanted to be a member of the Stackin’ Hits developmental plan. He was even on a playlist that Trey made for his father of up-and-coming artists that David should watch out for. But David never listened. In classic Spike Lee fashion, the third act is extended to its breaking point, leaving room for the film’s best scene: a two-hander between Washington and Rocky in a recording studio where they debate everything from the morality of Archie’s actions to the erosion of David’s “best ears”. It’s not only a moment where Rocky proves himself capable of holding his own against one of our greatest living actors, but the moment Highest 2 Lowest most confronts its own inner contradictions.
Not everything holds together as well. Part of the tension in a Spike Lee film is the multitude of baffling creative decisions that abound throughout. He’s not thoughtless, and the strangeness in his choices can only come from someone who is immensely talented and confident, which is why even his non-masterpieces (like Highest 2 Lowest) have an element of charm. That said, one major demerit is the absence of Lee’s usual collaborator, composer Terrence Blanchard, whose dramatic jazz scores have often lifted his movies to great heights. This movie’s music, by Howard Drossin, is constant and intrusive. The effect is unnerving, giving simple conversations a tinge of unnecessary melodrama. This is how Lee likes to score his films, but without the swelling gravitas of Blanchard’s work, it feels hollow, distracting. Which you can say about a lot of elements within Highest 2 Lowest, even if it does deliver great performances from Washington, Wright, and (most impressively) A$AP Rocky.
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Directed by Spike Lee