Spike Lee’s latest, the Denzel Washington-starring thriller Highest 2 Lowest (now streaming on Apple TV+), is the veteran director’s love letter to New York City and Japanese auteur Akira Kurowsawa, in that order. Critics have been unanimous in their praise, with an 88 percent critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes. Indeed, Highest 2 Lowest is one of Lee’s best movies in almost a decade, and is well worth adding to your weekend watch list.
It’s Not a Remake, More a Remix
Highest 2 Lowest is a remix, rather than a remake, or Kurosawa’s 1963 thriller High and Low, which starred Japanese superstar Toshiro Mifune as a wealthy businessman whose son is ransomed by ruthless kidnappers. Washington steps into the Mifune role. He plays the aptly named David King, a music producer comparable to Quincy Jones or Mark Ronson who lives atop a gleaming high-rise in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. When we first meet him, following a lively opening montage set to Oklahoma’s Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’, he’s standing on his balcony overlooking the Manhattan skyline, cell phone in hand, making deals. At his office, he meets with a prospective client (Ice Spice, convincing in a brief role) and banters with his longtime chauffeur and best friend, Paul King (Jeffrey Wright). David and Paul’s relationship is established easily through their shared nickname for one another, “beloved.”
But then David’s son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), is kidnapped while walking home with Paul’s son, Kyle (an affecting Elijah Wright, Jeffrey Wright’s real-life son), and a madcap race ensues to scrape together the ransom money. This means David, who’s about to make a big acquisition through his label, has to borrow some money earmarked for that transaction. But he’ll be able to replace it before anyone notices, right? Wrong. The money drop goes south, the kidnapping becomes much more complicated than previously thought, and Paul becomes inextricably involved. David, in a serious moral quandary, must decide whether or not to track down the kidnappers on his own despite the protestations of FBI agents Higgins (Dean Winters, spectacular) and Bell (an amusingly understated LaChanze).
Lee Celebrates New York at Every Turn
After a shaky opening act dominated by Howard Drossin’s bombastic score, Highest 2 Lowest clicks into gear as soon as the thriller element is introduced. Lee, never a filmmaker to leave the kitchen sink less than overflowing, is clearly having a grand old time doing what is essentially a classical popcorn thriller. It’s one of his most populist movies, but it’s brimming with the social satire and perverse, darkly comic unpredictability that defines the best of the filmmaker’s oeuvre.
The picture’s second half is also its best, featuring two stunning central sequences. The first is the money drop, which takes our characters from downtown Manhattan into deep Harlem (during the Puerto Rican Day parade no less), is a masterclass action sequence. It’s hands down one of Lee’s most expertly crafted sections in any of his films. From there, David must travel across the city to gather clues about the suspects. Delightfully unexpected as it becomes more of a straight detective piece than you’d expect Lee to craft, this section vibrates with the director’s love for New York and its outer boroughs. The mise en scene, the mood, the visceral feeling of summer heat which permeates each frame is as engaging as the central mystery.
The second comes near the end of the film, and features David facing off against his tormentor in a recording studio in an impromptu rap battle. It’s a searing sequence featuring top-notch work from Washington and his scene partner, both of whom are Oscar-worthy here. If Washington gets a nomination for this (as he should) this scene will be a big part of the reason why. There’s an addendum to this sequence at the very end of the film which is equally rousing, and unexpectedly tragic.
In its final movement, Lee allows Highest 2 Lowest to resemble, but not become, a more recognizable action-thriller. Lee and Washington seem to be at once homaging and respectfully spoofing the latter’s many roles in butt-kicking so many movies, but here David is depicted as a normal guy in extraordinary circumstances rather than a superhero, and he acts as such. It’s a choice which keeps the film grounded throughout its conclusion, which features a stunt more on par with Mission: Impossible than anything in Lee’s filmography. One of the most interesting choices about Lee’s direction is that he largely avoids violence. There’s a little bit of action, a few gunshots and a foot chase, but little outright violence. Overall, the film has a good-hearted quality which strays far from any obvious nihilism, a rare feat these days in any thriller. It’s certainly one of Lee’s most optimistic and redemptive movies.
It’s Lee’s Best Movie Since BlacKkKlansman
Highest 2 Lowest is Lee’s best film since BlacKkKlansman (2017), though it remains to be seen if his Kurosawa homage will receive as much Oscars love as that ripped-from-the-headlines thriller. As far as comparisons to the original film, Lee largely eschews them by making Highest 2 Lowest his own beast. Some sequences are repeated or reimagined, but for the most part it stands alone. It’s a direct contrast to Lee’s 2013 remake of Oldboy, which suffered much studio interference.
His latest film is directly from the heart, gloriously uncompromised and undisciplined, an elegy for one of Japan’s finest directors and for a city which Lee seems to value above all else. Who but Spike Lee would feature a scene in a sweaty-palmed thriller in which a rabid Mets fan (Nick Turturro) looks directly into the camera and screams, “F–k Boston!”? Highest 2 Lowest is a film loaded with ideas, and if not all of them work, enough of them do that it stands high above the pack of this year’s most memorable, heartfelt, and virtuosic films.
