Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ pulls some punches, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a enjoyable journey : NPR

Attempting to reimagine Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 near-perfect High and Low could look like a idiot’s errand, however in the end it is easy to grasp Spike Lee’s want to take action. Lee is each a famous cinephile and longtime examiner of the haves and have-nots. The central premise — a rich businessman, scrambling to realize management of his firm, faces a disaster of conscience when his chauffeur’s son is held at ransom — is sturdy and common sufficient to bear fruit from a recent replace.

Lee’s newest joint, Highest 2 Lowest, is not near-perfect, nor does it attain the artistic heights of his greatest work in four-plus many years of filmmaking. But in contrast to his 2013 remake of Oldboy, it clearly demonstrates its causes for being. Finally, he is reunited with one among his most fruitful collaborators, Denzel Washington, nearly twenty years after their pairing on the impressed and thrilling heist movie Inside Man. Together they create a enjoyable homage that rekindles their spark, even when by the tip, Lee appears to be pulling punches in his examination of sophistication and privilege.

Washington is one-percenter David King, a music mogul who lives like a king of New York City. He’s stated to have “the best ears in the business,” and has used that acuity to construct an empire for his spouse Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and their teen son Trey (Aubrey Joseph); all of them stay in a towering penthouse mansion in Brooklyn’s Olympia DUMBO constructing, an ostensible oasis which presently beckons privileged would-be tenants with the chance to “live above it all.” Lee and cinematographer Matthew Libatique take full benefit of these beautiful views, immersing the viewers within the grand splendor of the town’s well-known skylines from a myriad of angles. It’s principally the cityscape model of meals porn.

As the film begins, the King household’s platinum tower is in a precarious state. David’s label Stackin’ Hits Records is liable to being swallowed up in a merger by an enormous conglomerate. He fears what’s going to occur if the deal goes by means of — a lack of the Black id he is cultivated on the firm over time, AI composing music with “no soul, no heart” — and is strategizing to purchase again nearly all of the label’s shares.

That plan is jeopardized, nevertheless, by a kidnapping; Trey is the supposed goal, however in a case of mistaken id, his greatest buddy is scooped up as a substitute — and that buddy additionally occurs to be the son of Paul (Jeffrey Wright), David’s chauffeur and closest confidante. Suddenly, David is offered with an ethical dilemma: cough up $17.5 million to the kidnapper and lose his label, or save Stackin’ Hits however decimate a household bond.

Like most of Lee’s catalog, Highest 2 Lowest is brimming with of-the-moment political commentary, nerdy cinematic references, and didactic downloads of Black historical past, a few of which gel higher with the story than others. In its greatest moments, it locks into the inherent imbalance of David and Paul’s murky dynamic, with Wright, per common, giving a magnetic, full-bodied efficiency energizing each scene he is in. He excavates moments of unease from his character’s place in life, discovering the strain between Paul’s love for David and his clear-eyed understanding that on the finish of the day, that is nonetheless an employee-employer relationship.

Somewhat disappointingly, the latter half of the movie largely abandons its curiosity in exploring the huge energy hole between them and what it means for his or her friendship. The screenplay, credited to Alan Fox, turns into a really totally different sort of film — extra like Washington’s Equalizer franchise meets Robert Altman’s The Player, because it have been. The social commentary continues to be there and Washington’s calculating swagger retains the plot engaged, nevertheless it shifts from an upstairs-downstairs morality story to a “kids these days” morality story, and that manifests as a missed alternative given the intense wealth inequity within the U.S. and the general public’s present animus in the direction of billionaires.

The film’s final act, which brings the kidnapper totally into the fold, jogged my memory of one of many extra preposterous viral memes from Black Twitter’s heyday, involving a pie-in-the-sky would-you-rather immediate: Have dinner with Jay-Z, or get $500K [or some other large amount] in money? The question functioned as a Rorschach check to find out who’d totally purchased into the hard-worn delusion of hustle tradition mentality — a delusion from which Jay-Z constructed a whole profession — and who was extra, let’s say, pragmatic about it. When requested concerning the meme, even Jay himself wasn’t making an attempt to promote a dream, no less than on this case; anybody anticipating him to show them the best way to fish over dinner would do higher to “take the money,” he advised Gayle King. “You got all that [wisdom] in [my] music for $10.99 — that’s a bad deal.”

Perhaps deliberately (or unavoidably), Washington’s David invokes Jay’s contradictory legacy, and Highest 2 Lowest performs out a bit like that dinner-with-Hov train, in that it reveals — typically inadvertently — the trimmings and limitations of celebrating Black wealth. There’s an old-school, Oprah-esque sheen that tempers the film’s chunk, from the King family’s ostentatious artwork assortment impressed by Lee’s personal private archive (Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley, and so forth) to the repeated element that the household helps up-and-coming Black artists. The presentation compels the viewers to marvel at and be happy with a Black household having attained all this energy, and means that as long as they do the “right” issues with stated energy — donate to charities and liberal causes, profess a love of Black tradition, and so forth. — there is not any must query it.

It appears unusual to be critiquing a Spike Lee joint for not being hard-hitting sufficient, however there are worse sins. If Highest 2 Lowest falls in need of searing evaluation, it nonetheless reiterates that Lee and Washington — who’s been on the verge of “retiring” from leading-man standing way back to Inside Man — are invigorated by this work, and it reveals. The highs are simply excessive and plentiful sufficient to make up for the few lows.