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Spike Lee’s working relationship with Denzel Washington stretches back 35 years. Their latest collaboration, Highest 2 Lowest (screening out of competition in Cannes), is an entertaining crime thriller – but it seems sketchy and lightweight when set against some of their previous movies together, most notably 1992’s Malcolm X.
Washington plays a New York record company boss, David King, the man with the “best ears in the business”. He’s a multimillionaire living in considerable luxury in a swanky apartment at the top of a very tall skyscraper. He has a beautiful wife, and respectful and talented children. But we know from the moment we first see him – looking down on the city below, the master of all he surveys – that his life will soon take a turn.
Now 70, Washington remains one of Hollywood’s most charismatic leading men. He excels at playing heroes with flaws or, as in Gladiator II or Training Day, villains so swaggering that you often end up rooting for them against the good guys. But he feels wasted here – his performance is vivid and wildly energetic, but ultimately short on emotional depth. The problem is that even when King’s world threatens to crumble around him, he is never dragged that low. He’s always the alpha. We are not given much sense of inner turmoil or doubt.
Early on, we’re given hints that King’s grip is already beginning to slip. When his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) mentions she’s about to make another huge donation to a well-meaning charity, he tells her to rein back. His company Stackin’ Hits is no longer turning out many chart-toppers. He’s living off past glories, yesterday’s man, not the kingmaker he once was.
It’s at this point that the plotting becomes contrived, even if it does stick fairly closely to the contours of High and Low, the 1963 classic by Japanese master Akira Kurosawa on which the film is based. (High and Low itself adapted Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom.) King is distraught after being told that his teenage son Trey has been kidnapped. But the kidnapper has taken the wrong boy. It’s his godson Kyle – the son of his associate Paul (Jeffrey Wright) – who has been mistakenly taken after both were at basketball practice together. The kidnapper still wants a $17.5m ransom in Swiss bank notes. Paul, an ex-con, is King’s business manager and best friend, but King still vacillates about paying that much money to free another man’s child. In adversity, King’s character flaws are magnified.
Highest 2 Lowest soon turns into a generic New York thriller complete with boorish, racist cops, scheming attorneys and self-pitying hoodlums. Some of the in-jokes are grating. At one stage, King visits someone in a room numbered A24 (the name of the independent production outfit backing the film). If everything seems familiar from countless other crime dramas, at least the film is very slickly and creatively directed by Lee. One brilliantly choreographed chase sequence involving trains, motorbikes and police cars suggests the director has been busy watching Fast & Furious movies.
Rapper turned movie star A$AP Rocky lends some much-needed edge and menace as the talented but bitterly resentful Young Felony, a singer whose demo was once turned down by King, whom he reveres. King sees reflections of himself in the younger man, who is ready to hustle and bend the rules to get ahead, and who seems to speak only in expletives.
Certain plot points leave you scratching your head. Young Felony is supposedly broke – he has a young wife (a very striking cameo from Bronx rapper Ice Spice) and no money – yet he still has his own recording studio. He is able to organise an incredibly complex robbery that leaves the cops bamboozled – but then hides the loot under his bed. It’s hardly the work of a criminal mastermind.
Lee is working with a top cast, but actors such as Wright and Wendell Pierce (playing one of King’s music company managers) have sketchy roles. This is ultimately Washington’s show. He remains as magnetic as ever, switching in a second from affability to menace, demanding respect from his sons and colleagues alike, and trying to keep multiple plates spinning at once as both his business and private lives go off the rails. It’s another of his virtuoso star turns, but it’s ultimately weakened by his refusal to show any emotional vulnerability whatsoever.
Dir: Spike Lee. Starring: Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice, A$AP Rocky, Dean Winters, Wendell Pierce. Cert TBC, 133 mins.
‘Highest 2 Lowest’ will stream on Apple TV+ from 5 September
English (US) ·