The team of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington produced some of the greatest movies of the 90s and 2000s. It began in 1990, with Mo Better Blues, Lee’s follow-up to Do The Right Thing, in which Washington portrayed a troubled jazz trumpeter. Arguably, 1992’s Malcolm X is the best film of the 1990s, and cemented Washington’s reputation as one of the best actors of his generation. Their last collaboration was 2006’s Inside Man, an instant classic heist thriller that became the duo’s biggest box office hit.
Now, 19 years later, Washington and Lee have reunited with a project that sounds really good on paper. Highest 2 Lowest is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High and Low, one of the legendary Japanese director’s collaborations with his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune. The plot revolves around Kingo Gondo, a wealthy shoe company executive who learns his son Jun has been kidnapped. The ransom is high enough to bankrupt Gondo, but he doesn’t hesitate to agree to it in order to save his boy. But soon it becomes apparent that the kidnappers got the wrong kid. Instead of the scion of a wealthy family, the criminals snatched Shinichi, the son of Gondo’s loyal chauffeur. Relieved, Gondo says he won’t pay the ransom. But when word gets out, Gondo’s reputation is ruined, and his old friend’s family is distraught. Finally, Gondo agrees to pay up, but he and the police secretly concoct a plan to catch the kidnappers and get his money back.
In Lee’s version, Washington plays David King, a record industry executive with “the best ears in the biz” who, not coincidentally, resembles Jay Z. The loyal driver is played by Jeffrey Wright. Paul is an ex-con who owes his post-incarceration success to David. Since Paul’s wife died, the King family took him under their wing, and so their sons Trey King (Aubrey Joseph) and Kyle Christopher (Elijah Wright) are best friends. David is in the midst of a series of financial maneuvers meant to solidify his personal control of the record company when he gets word that his son has been kidnapped.
Given the impeccable pedigree behind Highest 2 Lowest, my expectations were extremely high. Lee’s last few films have been gold, including the exquisite BlacKKKlansman and the moody Vietnam War drama Da 5 Bloods. Washington, likewise, is coming off of an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Macbeth in Joel Coen’s 2021 Shakespearian adaptation, and a show-stealing performance as an eccentric Roman wheeler-dealer in Gladiator II.
But Highest 2 Lowest is, unfortunately, an epic face-plant. Washington’s got plenty to work with as a man of privilege whose character is tested when he is put into an impossible bind. But his performance is strangely bloodless. He has zero chemistry with either his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) or son, and sleepwalks through the police procedural sequences with a distracting Dean Winters (the Mayhem guy from the annoying Allstate commercials). A tightly wound Jeffrey Wright manages to coax a little life out their interactions, but his dialogue is as overwritten (he calls his boss “beloved”) as his character is underdeveloped. Lee spends about half the running time setting up the professional and domestic dramas around the King family and the record label, but all it amounts to is a depressing cavalcade of wealth porn and power fantasies. The one thing Lee does seem to be genuinely enthusiastic about the drone he uses to get sweeping vistas of New York City, but that quickly gets old. Lee’s style is notoriously shaggy, but there’s usually a focused thesis which emerges from the digressions. This time around, the thesis appears to be “Denzel is a badass,” which is usually true, but there’s little evidence of it onscreen.
Lee’s shagginess is also usually redeemed by his musical sense, which lends momentum to his montages. But the music in Highest 2 Lowest is its biggest failure. The film has a full orchestral score which somehow plays like temp music the filmmaker forgot to replace in the final cut. The relentlessly dull music flattens out what should be a riveting action sequences where King schleps a backpack containing his life savings through a crowded subway car. Highest 2 Lowest should be a triumphant victory lap for the most potent actor/director combo since Kurosawa and Mfune. Instead, the kidnapping drama plays out like a phoned-in cash grab.