As bold as it is to create an updated version of Akira Kurosawa’s perfect kidnapping drama High & Low (itself an adaptation of an Ed McBain novel), if you’re going to do it, you should do it like Spike Lee has with Highest2Lowest. Pairing for a fifth time with Denzel Washington, Lee has taken the framework of Kurosawa’s film and hung his own images on it. To make a comparison between the two films may be obvious and easy, but it’s also reductive, as most obvious and easy things are.
Highest2Lowest opens with a lush scan of the New York City skyscape until we meet Washington’s David King at his incredibly swank high-rise apartment (a breathtaking piece of cinema shot by DP Matthew Libatique). He has Basquiats on the wall and the kind of furniture that you’d ask permission to sit on if you were a guest.
David King is a once high-flying music mogul cut from the Ahmet Ertegun/Clive Davis cloth: The man with “the best ears in the business.” However, King’s star and label (Stackin’ Hits) have faded with time. After having sold off enough of his interest in the label, King is looking to buy it back, take control, and run it his way again. That means coming up with a huge sum of money before the label is sold to an even bigger label (Stray Dog).
What makes Spike’s film a distinctly individual vision, despite being a “remake,” is the director’s focus on the desire for an old lion to remain relevant. If King lets the sale to Stray Dog go through, he can semi-retire, spend more time with the family, and coast for the rest of his life. If we’ve learned anything about society, it’s that prominent men are addicted to their prominence—they don’t know how to fade away with grace.
There’s something noble and foolish in the desire to maintain significance. As long as you’re above ground, it is a worthy pursuit to attempt to contribute and to build. At the same time, what was all that building for if not to secure a time in your life when you can focus on the things we all say matter most? Particularly, family. The male ego has long wrestled with the notion of getting out of the game and onto the glory years, perhaps forever. Men seldom want to hand over power, whether they are politicians, businessmen, or athletes.
David King is just such a person. Despite pressure from his wife (Ilfenesh Hadera) and son (Aubrey Joseph) to be more present and available in their lives, and the opportunity to do so all but in hand, King can’t help himself. However, his best laid plans go awry when he receives a call from a kidnapper (an excellent ASAP Rocky) saying he has King’s son and only $17.5 million in Swiss francs will get him back.
At first, the kidnapping plot appears to resolve quickly, but a case of mistaken identity leads to a moral dilemma. “How far are you willing to go if you are not directly affected?” King is again pressed by his wife and son to do the right thing, this time in the commission of aiding a dear family friend. Trouble is, to do so would mean to extend his means to a degree that his deal to buy back a controlling share of his label will be scuttled. Does King do the humane thing, or the (understandably) selfish thing?
Here is where having Denzel Washington as your lead comes in very handy. One of the most underrated values Washington has brought to the screen is his willingness to play a heel. He’s like Newman in that way. Their characters are often not as appealing as their off-camera personas. King may not be a horrible man, but he isn’t a particularly good one either. His ego is as large as the excesses he surrounds himself with. King has to decide not if blood is thicker than water, but if it’s thicker than friendship, and if green is the only color that really matters.
Washington gives a big performance here, but it’s a turn that’s commensurate with the type of man he is playing. If Gladiator II was Washington dialed up to 11, Highest2Lowest finds him at a 10 1/2. While some may take issue with the showmanship here, the actor’s relentless charisma and ability to be charming and of questionable moral fiber (often in the same moment) are essential to the film’s success.
Being a Spike Lee film, multiple themes are going on at once. Aside from a portrait of a successful older man trying to extend his run, Lee also touches on the impact of social media and how it shapes our decisions, the thin, almost transparent line between fame and infamy (“attention is the only form of currency), and the vast gap between the wealthy and the struggling. Highest2Lowest isn’t just a play on words; building off the title of Kurosawa’s film, it’s also a statement about those at the peak of life and those at the bottom.
While the nature of capitalist indifference to ordinary people could have been explored more by Lee, scenes between King and his driver, Paul (Jeffrey Wright), expose an underlying tension between old friends that nearly comes to a boil when Paul is the one in need. Likewise, the showdown between King and the kidnapper is full of dialogue (much of it in the form of a brilliantly written rap battle) about the pain of being the low and surrounded by the high.
Watching ASAP Rocky go toe-to-toe with Washington is something to see. A rapper going up against one of the most well-feted actors of this generation is a perilous task, but ASAP is more than up to it. The anger of being looked past is evident in his every word. The two men are remarkably well-matched.
Beyond the abundant social commentary, Highest2Lowest is a cracking good thriller. The ransom drop scene, shot against the backdrop of NYC’s annual Puerto Rico Day celebration, starting on a subway, and spilling into the streets, leads to a dynamic and scintillating getaway sequence. Almost as impressive is King chasing the kidnapper from a recording studio through the streets and onto a subway during the film’s action climax. That Washington, a septuagenarian, can run so credibly, and thanks to genetics (and hair dye), looks so young, helps to address the high-level need for the suspension of disbelief necessary to accept him as the chaser in a chase scene. (I suppose it also helps that Washington is only two years removed from his last Equalizer movie).
Still, with all the underlying and overlying messaging and the skillful thrills on display, the strongest statement in the film is the hopeless quest to defy time. David King wants people to know he’s still here. He still matters. Part of me thinks, intended or not, that Spike and Denzel (68 and 70 years old, respectively) are making the same argument for themselves. Highest2Lowest is one terrific argument in the affirmative.
Highest2Lowest is available to stream now on AppleTV.
