One of my favorite aspects of Spike Lee’s decidedly unsubtle filmmaking is that sometimes this lack of subtlety manifests as earnest cheesiness. Lee is a master of his craft because he loves his craft, and one of the reasons why his characters are so strong is that he loves each and every one of them too, regardless of their flaws, or even their outright villainy. He loves New York, he loves music, he loves storytelling. This love is why even his lesser movies still have value, and why his best movies place him among the best filmmakers to ever do it. And on those rare instances where his love and care takes the form of cheese, it’s hard not to feel the warmth, even if our eyes can’t stop rolling.
Such is the case for Highest 2 Lowest — well, it’s the case for the first hour or so of Lee’s loose remake of the Kurosawa classic High and Low. Standing in for Toshiro Mifune’s shoe magnate is Denzel Washington as David King, founder and co-owner of Stackin’ Hits records, a company on the cusp of selling out to a high corporate bidder. This doesn’t sit well with King who, despite his lavish lifestyle and general command of his surroundings, wishes to place it all on the line in order to buy a majority share and keep the company in the business of chasing quality over profit (a fun update to “I don’t want to make flimsy shoes”). But when a botched kidnapping seizes his driver’s son instead of his own, King is thrust into a quandary: throw away his life’s work to pay the ransom and rescue the boy, or save his company and hope for the best while leaving his longtime friend (Jeffrey Wright) on his own against the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky).
Much like Kurosawa’s film, this is a tale told in two acts. The first being the moral quandary about what to do, and the second being the fallout from the decision. And much like the original, Lee’s film comes to life in the back half. But unlike High and Low, the first act of Highest 2 Lowest is didactic, turgid, and filled with utterly baffling choices. It’s a credit to the film that it’s eventually able to recover so nimbly, starting with a knockout sequence during Puerto Rican Day celebrations, but even as the film climbs toward its exceptional final reel, it’s hard to get the taste of the first hour out of the proverbial mouth.
The most baffling choice, short of the repeated and literal explication of King’s unfortunate situation, is the score. It’s a near non-stop pitter-patter of busy stage musical-esque orchestral music that overshadows and undercuts the performances by telling the viewer how to feel in every moment, and it just. Never. Stops. This, in conjunction with a script that has the characters speaking as if they’re aware of the audience, leads to the film feeling unsure whether it wants to be a melodrama or a thriller. It ends up feeling like a soap opera, and not in a good way.
But then the back half hits and suddenly the film feels two steps ahead of my criticisms. The first of two bang up sequences on a train echoes the clinical intensity of Lee’s Inside Man, and suddenly the performers all fall into a rhythm that was previously absent. It’s a different film entirely, and in an instant everyone is in agreement as to how it should be played. It’s here in the back nine that Wright moves to the forefront and reminds us why he’s one of the most compelling performers on the planet. A handful of exchanges between he and Washington radiate with the film’s thematic concerns, namely the juxtaposition of high social status against low, and how the former cannot exist without the latter, while the latter suffers under the former’s boot. As the film moves toward a finale that utilizes the glass window of a recording booth to literalize another dichotomous power imbalance, it’s smooth and clever enough to (almost) forgive the clunky and hokey first act. At one point, even the annoying score clicks as well, and the initial tonal mismatch suddenly makes a bit more sense.
A film like this one, which seems at war with itself for much of its runtime, demands a second viewing, and one that isn’t so soon after my first and only viewing of Kurosawa’s tale on the material (both films are based on a novel). Without having to give consideration to the baggage inherent to remakes, and with a knowledge of the way this energetic film comes together after the halfway point, I suspect it will fare better overall. But even if it doesn’t, it remains a solid middle entry in the breadth of Lee’s filmography.
Directed by Spike Lee
Written by Alan Fox, based on the film High and Low written by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Eijirô Hisaita, based on the novel King’s Ransom by Evan Hunter as Ed McBain
Starring Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Aubrey Joseph
Rated R, 113 minutes
