 |
| TRAILER |
There is something volcanic about Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest — something simmering just beneath the polished veneer of a prestige thriller, waiting to erupt. At first glance, it might seem reckless, even blasphemous, to remake Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 psychological noir High and Low , one of cinema’s most psychologically acute dissections of class and morality. But Lee isn’t merely remaking Kurosawa. He’s reinterpreting him, remixing the master’s austerity through the jazz-like improvisation of hip-hop aesthetics, urban tension, and Black excellence. The result is a film that doesn't simply pay homage; it roars with its own voice — bombastic, angry, mournful, and joyous all at once.
Denzel Washington, in his fifth collaboration with Lee, delivers a performance at once regal and frayed. He plays David King, a music mogul standing on the precipice of what he imagines to be his final, triumphant act — regaining controlling shares in Stackin’ Hits, the label he co-founded. From the balcony of his penthouse at the Olympia Dumbo, we see a man who has mastered the game, a Black patriarch elevated high above the city’s chaos. But King’s illusion of power is shattered by a single phone call: his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), has been kidnapped. The ransom? A staggering 17.5 million Swiss francs — the very sum he’s just liquidated to buy back his company.
The premise echoes Kurosawa’s — the moral dilemma of sacrificing business for blood — but Lee layers on new forms of currency: perception, optics, and virality. In Highest 2 Lowest, morality isn’t measured only in banknotes but in likes, retweets, and headlines. "Would you save your son, or save face?" becomes the soul-splitting question, and in the age of surveillance and spectacle, there are no easy answers.
The film's first two acts are taut and deliberate, echoing the procedural DNA of its predecessor. Three NYPD detectives (Dean Winters, LaChanze, and a standout John Douglas Thompson) provide exposition and ballast, but it’s not until a breathless set piece during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in the South Bronx that the film detonates its potential. Here, Lee does what only Lee can: he collapses spectacle into subtext. The crowd, the music (a pulse-racing Eddie Palmieri piano solo), the frenzy — it all becomes a metaphor for a city that thrives on momentum and misdirection.
Visually, Highest 2 Lowest is one of Lee’s richest canvases. Cinematographer Chayse Irvin turns New York into a mythic battleground of light and shadow, from the cerulean sheen of the East River skyline to the neon-drenched underbellies of subway cars. David King’s apartment is part war room, part museum of cultural legacy — adorned with African sculptures, Harlem Renaissance paintings, and yes, carefully aged photos of a younger Denzel Washington, reminding us that this is not just a character, but a cipher for Black history, resilience, and contradiction.
But it is in the final act — an audaciously original departure from Kurosawa — that the film transcends genre and enters spiritual terrain. A confrontation between King and the kidnapper, played with twitchy magnetism by Rakim Mayers (A$AP Rocky), becomes something other than vengeance. It becomes ritual. Their verbal duel, staged as an impromptu rap battle, is bold, risky, and deeply theatrical. What could have been camp is, in Lee’s hands, operatic catharsis. “You either build or destroy in this world,” King tells his adversary. And suddenly, it’s clear that this isn’t a film about crime at all. It’s about the architecture of choice.
Lee’s decision to cast Mayers as the antagonist is a masterstroke. Known for his charisma, here he weaponizes it, crafting a villain whose ideology almost seduces. His pain is real, his logic sharp. He’s less a villain than a mirror — a reflection of what King might have become under different stars. Their showdown is not about who is right, but what has been lost.
Jeffrey Wright, as David’s oldest friend Paul, delivers a quietly devastating performance. His subplot — a man criminalized by history, ignored by the very system that lionizes his friend — adds a crucial layer. In one chilling moment, the police’s double standard is laid bare, and Wright doesn’t need a monologue; his eyes carry the weight of a thousand injustices. The film’s treatment of race isn’t polemic — it’s architectural. It’s in the foundation of every scene, the gravity behind every decision.
Much will be said of the film’s musical finale, a concert-turned-communal reckoning that gives the film its title. It is grandiose, maybe even indulgent, but Lee has earned it. By then, Highest 2 Lowest has made the case that art — whether rap, jazz, or cinema — is the only way to translate suffering into something survivable. The film ends not with resolution, but with resurrection. Like Malcolm X, like BlacKkKlansman, it is less a period than a semicolon — a call to continue.
Spike Lee’s films have always been political, but here, the politics are personal. The agony of the father, the burden of success, the fragility of legacy — it all bleeds together. This is the work of an elder statesman who no longer needs to prove himself, but who still refuses to be silent.
There are imperfections, to be sure. Some may find the first act too measured, the tonal shifts too jagged, the climax too theatrical. But cinema, as Lee reminds us, isn’t about perfection. It’s about risk, and rhythm, and rupture. In daring to remake Kurosawa, Lee hasn’t merely modernized High and Low — he’s recontextualized it, channeling its bones into a living, breathing New York story that crackles with urgency.
In the end, the film is as much manifesto as movie: a declaration of what matters, and what doesn’t. For David King, it’s not the music empire, or the penthouse view, or even the legacy. It’s the boy. The blood. The second chance.
And for Spike Lee, it’s cinema — still the most potent weapon for truth-telling there is.
No comments:
Post a Comment