Highest 2 Lowest Review
It’s an opening scene dripping with irony. To the strains of “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma, we’re taken on what could easily be a promotional video tour of New York as the sun rises on a glittering city. But it immediately sets the tone and visual style for Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee’s first feature for five years and, coincidentally, his fifth collaboration with his leading man, Denzel Washington.
He’s David King who, blessed with “the best pair of ears in the business”, has become a legendary music producer with an enviable track record. About to close a big financial deal, he receives a call telling him that his teenage son, Trey, has been abducted. The police are called in, the kidnapper sets out his demands – $17million – and out of the blue his son shows up. The victim, in fact, is Kyle, the son of King’s chauffeur and oldest friend, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). Not that the kidnapper cares that he’s made a mistake. He still wants his money, and King now faces a moral dilemma that’s horribly close to playing God. Does he refuse to pay? As he points out, it’s not his kid that’s in danger. Or does he do what everybody tells him is the right thing – pay the ransom, which has the added advantage of making him public hero number one?
Based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural High And Low, Lee’s version gives us a fresh perspective on the same story and its inherent dilemma instead of a straight re-make. Still very much a film of two halves, it takes its time throughout the first section, using it more to establish the characters and the director’s targets than to build up the tension. The second half of Highest 2 Lowest kicks in with a vengeance with a high-speed attempt to pay the ransom and a sequence on a packed subway that you can almost smell. It’s literally and figuratively miles away from that idyllic opening, reinforcing the dividing line between the haves and have-nots that lies at the heart of King’s dilemma.
As ever, Lee has a sizeable axe to grind, this time technology in all its shapes and forms – AI and social media are at the top of his list – although he attempts to balance his criticism and scepticism with a smattering of positive observations. But, in the main, it’s a world where technology is rapidly erasing originality and the creative spirit, replacing it with artifice. And it’s all in pursuit of a fast buck. The film is shot through with a resistance to change and comes close to being a lament for the past and the erosion of truth. Big subjects, but what sets this apart from his previous works is a change of tone. Unlike Black KKKlansman and Da Five Bloods, Highest 2 Lowest speaks with a more mellow voice: Lee’s customary anger and confrontation are still there, but tempered by age and life.
Not that he’s lost any of his energy. The second half of Highest 2 Lowest is packed with it, and his two lead actors are on fine form, both individually and as a double act. Washington, as we all know, is a class act, and his music mogul is a self-made man who can duck and dive with the best of them, but is savvy enough to take a lesson to heart. He’s matched by Wright as his chauffeur and best friend, an ex-con and convert to Islam who struggles to keep his anger under control and, at times, sounds like the voice of Lee himself. The sight of the two of them taking matters into their own hands is one of the film’s highlights and is more than worth the wait. Indeed, if you had any doubt during the first part that it was worth your time, then the second half gives you the answer loud and clear. You won’t regret a second.
★★★★
In cinemas and on Apple TV+ from September 5th / Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, Aubrey Joseph, Elijah Wright / Dir: Spike Lee / Apple Original Films and A24 / 15
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