The term “late style” can be a bit of an amorphous catch-all term in art criticism, a concept that can stretch or shrink to fit any discussion of an artist in the later years of a storied career. It’s even harder to unpack within a specific film context, but the newest release from Spike Lee, his first collaboration with Denzel Washington in twenty years, screams “late style.” Lacking the space to expand upon that, we might, for the sake of expedience, call it “unc cinema.”
“Highest 2 Lowest” is the third explicit remake in Lee’s filmography and the second to have its origins in Asia. Akira Kurosawa’s original 1963 film “High and Low” follows Toshiro Mifune as a businessman on the precipice of a life-changing deal who must contend with his son getting kidnapped. Once he discovers that the perpetrators have snatched his driver’s son by mistake, he has to decide whether to pay the ransom or use the funds for the corporate buyout he had previously been planning. Kurosawa’s film wrings a lot of drama from both the moral conundrum and the inherent tension from the police procedural aspect of the story.
However, Lee, while honoring the work he is adapting and modernizing, executes the proceedings with his own unique flair and his usual personal preoccupations. Washington plays David King, a record executive whose label, Stackin’ Hits Records, is on the verge of being bought out. King was once a trusted and vaunted tastemaker in the music industry, “the best ears in the business.”
The time we spend with King before his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) appears to be kidnapped feels like what we’ve come to expect from late-period Spike Lee. Style-wise, we’re bowled over by brassy, overbearing score from composer Howard Drossin and reliably gorgeous visuals from cinematographer Matthew Libatique. All the usual Spike touchstones are there, too, from characters shouting directly at the camera in intense moments that begin to feel like they were shot for 3D, to older Black men speaking in hustle culture aphorisms — and, of course, pervasive Celtics and Red Sox slander.
Washington delivers a truly stirring turn, perhaps his most layered since “Fences.”
While King and his driver Paul (Jeffrey Wright) wax philosophically about the good ole days and the way technology and social media have changed things, one would be forgiven for reducing the film to “It’s Because You Be On That Phone: The Movie.” But the way the kidnapping narrative unfolds allows the film to metamorphose into something far more fascinating, unpacking themes about class divisions and law enforcement’s duty to capital.
Washington delivers a truly stirring turn, perhaps his most layered since “Fences,” as we watch his King run through an obstacle course of inner turmoil. He is revealed, in this complex predicament, to be a fiercely selfish and proud man. In one moment, he considers Paul a brother, and we see that Paul, who has nothing to give but his labor and his loyalty, is willing to do whatever it takes to assist in getting Trey back safely. But once Trey is back safely and it’s Paul’s son Kyle (Elijah Wright) whose life hangs in the balance, King treats him begging for help with the ransom as if he were nothing more than another vulture, like the artists who hang around begging to be signed.
There is one particular passage where we hear every character’s input on whether King should pay the ransom, and each player has a personal dilemma completely unrelated to whether or not Kyle lives or dies. His wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), worries paying a ransom the cops can’t retrieve is gambling their life savings away. Trey worries about social media blaming him for his own best friend’s death. (Perhaps the most dramatically charged scene you’ll ever see to include the dialogue “Black Twitter is dogging me out!”)
But the moral argument can only go on so long before it feels like thematic wheelspinning, especially given Lee’s apparent hesitance to fully commit to King’s moral vacuity. The film reaches its apex of unc-ness as King sits in his office dramatically pleading with images of Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, and James Brown for spiritual guidance. In another filmmaker’s hands, this would be a moment to consider just leaving the theater. Thankfully, it’s an unfortunate trough before the film’s liveliest heights.
The ransom handoff sequence is one of the most thrilling things Lee has helmed in ages. Explaining or describing it in any detail would rob it of its chaotic effervescence, of the kinetic and assured way Lee allows a tense and brutal set piece to surprise and delight. It is genuinely captivating enough to carry over into perhaps the most electric scene in the film, when Washington gets to go toe-to-toe with A$AP Rocky’s Yung Felon — an impressive turn from the rapper, who spends the bulk of the film as a disembodied voice, still able to express such desperation, bitterness, and rage through vocals alone. The two have an unforeseen chemistry that suggests Lee might conclude his narrative very differently than Kurosawa did.
Instead, he succumbs to the expected conservative approach to dramatic climax. For all the fiery rebellion still glued to Lee’s core since the ’80s, he can never quite extinguish the urge to tell a young man to pull his pants up when the time comes. “Highest 2 Lowest” thankfully never reaches the kind of grating moralizing that plagued “Clockers” or “BlacKkKlansman.” Still, the film’s ending remains a bummer nonetheless.
Questionable conclusions and inconsistent themes aside, at the end of the day, he’s still a thrill to watch work. One can only hope we don’t have to wait another two decades for this director/star duo to reunite.
“Highest 2 Lowest” is currently streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.