Highest 2 Lowest is an apt title for Spike Lee's latest, as it's a film of peaks and troughs. The highs come courtesy of a pair of hammy but undeniably watchable performances from Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright. The lows come from, well, everything else, from a script that never settles on one idea long enough for it have impact to a wildly inappropriate score that sounds like a bad Riverdance knockoff.
Lee's film is a remake - or as the kids now call it, a "reimagining" - of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 thriller High and Low, which was adapted from Ed McBain's (aka Hitchcock collaborator Evan Hunter) novel 'King's Ransom'. Lee is the second major American auteur to attempt such a thing in recent years, following Steven Soderbergh's TV mini-series Full Circle.
The central hook of McBain's novel and Kurosawa's film remains intact. Washington is a wealthy businessman, here a Berry Gordy-esque music mogul unsubtly named David King, whose teenage son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), is kidnapped just before he is set to sink his savings into buying back the record label he founded and subsequently sold two decades ago. But when Trey shows up unharmed and very much unabducted, it becomes clear that the kidnapper screwed up and mistakenly snatched Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of David's chauffeur Paul (Wright). Nevertheless, the kidnapper still demands his $17.5 million ransom.
So, will David do the right thing (sorry!) and pay the ransom, thus saving Kyle's life, or look after his own business interests? Kurosawa's film focussed heavily on this moral quandary, but Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox dispense with it far too quickly. David's ultimate decision comes so abruptly that you might find yourself wondering if several scenes were left on the cutting room floor. The protagonist's angst is reduced to a scene where he asks the portraits of various African-American icons what they would do in his very expensive shoes. Lumped in with passed away legends like James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix is the still very much alive Stevie Wonder - wouldn't David have his phone number? Just give Stevie a call dammit!
In the movie's second half it begins to significantly diverge from the plot of its predecessor as Washington reverts to his Equalizer persona to track down the kidnapper himself. But the main diversion is just how badly Lee wants us to like his protagonist. There's none of the quiet class anger of Kurosawa's far more subtle film, with David rendered like the Cliff Huxtable of the music biz. Any conflict between David and Paul is dispensed with a patronising pat on the back from the former. There's a far more interesting version of this story that focusses more heavily on Paul, but here the character is reduced to little more than a comic sidekick. Washington may be the one sporting an unflattering tight bowl haircut and distracting dentures, but Wright is very much the Jerry Lewis to his Dean Martin. David's treatment of Paul is so condescending at times that you'll be rooting for Paul to sock him in the jaw, but I don't think the film is entirely aware of this.
Lee has never been one to rein in his directorial excesses, and potentially tense set-pieces are ruined here by self-indulgent signifiers of Lee's personal interests. A chase scene is constantly disrupted by cutaways of New York Yankees fans shouting slogans and anti-Boston slurs on the subway. Serious moments are punctuated by wipes featuring the logo of David's record label. What should be a fraught confrontation is played for laughs and turned into a rap battle.
But while they're often messy, Lee's films are rarely dull. Here it's the manic energy of Washington's performance, dialled up to Pacino levels, that keeps us invested, along with Wright's highly entertaining and genuinely funny performance (though too often we're expected to laugh at rather than with Paul) as his sidekick that keeps us invested. Highest 2 Lowest is never boring, but it's often bewildering.
Highest 2 Lowest is on Apple TV+
Directed by: Spike Lee
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky
