D+Directed by Spike Lee Starring Denzel Washington Review by Jon Kissel |  |
I don’t need Spike Lee to tell me that Denzel Washington is one of the coolest, most charismatic humans on the planet. That image, cultivated by Lee in their more productive collaborations, is self-evident every time Washington appears on screen or does an interview. The legendary movie star hasn’t lost his step, but Lee certainly has. Their latest film, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, retitled Highest 2 Lowest, is a baffling and amateurish miss that Denzel has to repeatedly rescue from a patronizing script and Lee’s horrible choices. The man who made Malcolm X and 25th Hour has forgotten how to transition between scenes. The director of Do the Right Thing no longer knows how to match score with action. High and Low is one of the several Kurosawa’s I’ve yet to see, but there’s no way the Japanese pioneer would make a film so reverent of its protagonist, that Highest 2 Lowest smells like one of those vanity projects rich assholes make to flatter themselves, like The Room or Fateful Findings.
Denzel plays a Jay-Z or Russell Simmons equivalent named David King, a surname that allows everyone to make tired puns about his wealth and power. Married to a woman half his age and father to a teenage son played by an actor 12 years younger than the actress playing his wife, King is in the midst of selling his record company, something he doesn’t want to do but feels the need to secure his family’s lifestyle. When he gets a ransom call saying his son has been kidnapped, King pulls out all the stops to get him back, but the victim is actually his son’s best friend and the son of King’s own best friend, taken by mistake. This changes the calculus, only insofar as a better film is dangled in front of the viewer and swapped out for the one where King does everything right and is beloved for it. Highest 2 Lowest is the story of a powerful man sacrificing nothing and emerging more powerful by the end of it. A kidnapping attempt on his family ends up being the best thing that could’ve happened to him.
Why can’t Lee recognize how much of his film is going poorly? Why can’t he hear how discordant the abysmal easy listening score by Howard Drossin is against Denzel playing his dark moment of the soul? Why does he allow world-breaking asides or props like the A24 apartment number or an ostentatious Kamala poster on the bedroom wall of a teenage boy or a Brooklyn goomba yelling Fuck Boston directly into the camera? ‘Social media’ gets said by King’s son multiple times in a way that implies Lee has never spoken to a teenager, or a man in his late 20’s pretending to be one. Lee surely has respect for Kurosawa and would want to honor the master’s work, but Apple dumping money on Lee’s doorstep must have neutralized that impulse, alongside the impulse to resist these childish digs and braindead characterizations.
The one thing that Lee knows is that he can just fall back on Denzel, and Denzel delivers. It’s unclear if scrub screenwriter Alan Fox wrote in his terrible script that King should use a microphone prop to give someone the hard sell, or if that was improvised genius on the part of Denzel. Its inclusion gives a terrible film a great scene earned solely by the actor and in spite of everything the director is trying to do. Some part of the viewer can buy that this character, depicted in this manner, would in fact be completely dipped in shit, untouchable by fate and circumstance and destined for the inevitable win. The smarter part recognizes that power fantasies can be fun in the moment but ultimately have nothing to say. Lee, a director who’s had a lot to say over the decades, can only now manage a Chris Farley Show-esque ‘wasn’t that cool.’ Someone needs to take a page out of Lee’s book and yell ‘Wake Up!’ in his face. D+
Why can’t Lee recognize how much of his film is going poorly? Why can’t he hear how discordant the abysmal easy listening score by Howard Drossin is against Denzel playing his dark moment of the soul? Why does he allow world-breaking asides or props like the A24 apartment number or an ostentatious Kamala poster on the bedroom wall of a teenage boy or a Brooklyn goomba yelling Fuck Boston directly into the camera? ‘Social media’ gets said by King’s son multiple times in a way that implies Lee has never spoken to a teenager, or a man in his late 20’s pretending to be one. Lee surely has respect for Kurosawa and would want to honor the master’s work, but Apple dumping money on Lee’s doorstep must have neutralized that impulse, alongside the impulse to resist these childish digs and braindead characterizations.
The one thing that Lee knows is that he can just fall back on Denzel, and Denzel delivers. It’s unclear if scrub screenwriter Alan Fox wrote in his terrible script that King should use a microphone prop to give someone the hard sell, or if that was improvised genius on the part of Denzel. Its inclusion gives a terrible film a great scene earned solely by the actor and in spite of everything the director is trying to do. Some part of the viewer can buy that this character, depicted in this manner, would in fact be completely dipped in shit, untouchable by fate and circumstance and destined for the inevitable win. The smarter part recognizes that power fantasies can be fun in the moment but ultimately have nothing to say. Lee, a director who’s had a lot to say over the decades, can only now manage a Chris Farley Show-esque ‘wasn’t that cool.’ Someone needs to take a page out of Lee’s book and yell ‘Wake Up!’ in his face. D+
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