‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is Spike Lee's ode to New York, Kurosawa- and the wisdom of elders
Lee’s first big-screen release in seven years reteams him with Denzel Washington, in a New York story about
Spike Lee has made five movies with Denzel Washington, and all five of them — Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man, and the new Highest 2 Lowest — were set either mostly or entirely in New York City, the hometown of both men.
Highest 2 Lowest, though, is different from the others in a couple of key ways: It’s the first time in their collaborations that Washington has played an older, wealthy man, in a way that allows Washington and Lee to explore the rarified experience of older men of stature, much like themselves.
In the film — a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 High and Low, which was itself based on Ed McBain’s novel “King’s Ransom” — Washington plays David King, a famous music producer and record label head, roughly comparable in stature to Quincy Jones (he has “the best ears in the business,” characters keep saying. It’s far from a one-to-one comparison, but there’s some Spike Lee to him as well, and not only because he vocally roots for the Knicks and Yankees.
King, like both Lee and Washington, is a family man who has been married to the same woman for his whole adult life and has continued to reside in his native New York City. He and his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), and their son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), live in a gorgeous apartment overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge.
With its artwork, its sports memorabilia, and its paintings of revered Black figures, the Kings’ apartment is the most impressively decorated dwelling I’ve seen in a film in several years. Both because of how great it looks, and what it tells us about who these people are.
The first half hour or so is mostly about King making a play to buy back his record label, rather than let it fall into the hands of soulless corporate vultures who want to make music using A.I. (in the Japanese version, it was a shoe company, and the corporate rivals wanted to cut corners to make the shoes cheaper.) King resists, likely having some attitudes that match those of Lee when it comes to the future of the movie business.
The film abruptly shifts after the first act, when it first appears that Trey has been kidnapped from a basketball camp and held for a $17 million ransom. But then, it turns out the kidnappers had accidentally grabbed not Trey but his friend Kyle, the son of King’s chauffeur and majordomo (Jeffrey Wright.) So King is left to make a decision over whether to still pay the ransom. If he does, it might cost him his company, but if he doesn’t, he could face reputational ruin.
Highest 2 Lowest is, at times, a thriller, and it’s got some exciting action sequences, including a dynamite setpiece on a subway train, which combines the inspiration of the Kurasawa version with clear nods to The French Connection. The music is top-notch, whether it’s kicking off with the opening number from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!,” or older soul music of the type David favors, or more modern hip-hop.
But at the heart of the movie is two things. The first is Lee’s love for New York, which, from the streets to the 6 train to the skyline, is lovingly photographed by Matthew Libatique.
And the other is the notion that elders, especially elders among Black men, have a wisdom that their younger counterparts lack- and not quite in a way that sounds like reactionary crankery. That’s how it would come across, nine times out of ten, when an older music industry figure has a war of words with a younger rapper (ASAP Rocky) and comes out ahead.
Lee isn’t always the most subtle filmmaker — for example, in this A24 movie, one character is shown living in apartment A24 — but I liked how the film made this point without underlining it too much. At any rate, it’s a truly fascinating statement for Lee, who was making big movies with big statements when he started his career while still his 20s, to make at this stage in his career.
Sure, I could quibble with some plot holes. The kidnappers are at times ruthlessly competent, and at other times laughably incompetent. The accounting of the various business deals doesn’t seem to add up, mostly because David would probably be considerably wealthier than the movie says he is. And I’m not sure the music charts would be moved in any direction by tabloid news stories involving the label owner.
Highest 2 Lowest, which debuted in May at Cannes, is Lee’s first feature film to open in theaters since BlacKkKlansman, which came out seven years ago and won Lee his first-ever competitive Oscar. His outstanding Da 5 Bloods came out in June of 2020, but was released straight to Netflix.
The new film, an Apple/A24 co-production, is getting a theatrical release for about three weeks before landing on Apple TV+, and it’s been almost insultingly underpromoted. When Apple co-promoted F1 with Warner Bros, Brad Pitt’s visage was on every screen on every Apple Store in the world, but I’ve barely seen a TV commercial for Highest 2 Lowest.
I wouldn’t put Highest 2 Lowest in the upper echelon of Lee’s filmography, which I reserve for Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and 25th Hour. But I’d say it land firmly in the next tier.