Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” Is a Meta-Reckoning with His Success

Though Kurosawa’s classic features the great Toshiro Mifune in the equivalent of Washington’s role, it doesn’t rely on its lead actor’s stardom to build out its ideas about the economic stratification of postwar Japan. Casting Washington as David, however, and featuring him alongside the unofficial Black hall of fame on the penthouse’s walls, call attention to the actor’s celebrity and decades-spanning career. And to those of Lee, who rose to prominence on a similar timeline to Washington’s, and whose work in the 1990s, in particular, was defined by their partnership. In this sense, Highest 2 Lowest, Lee and Washington’s fifth collaboration, is a quintessential “late” film, entwining the source narrative’s social issues with a meta-reckoning on inheritance and memory, especially as it relates to high-profile Black artists charged with representational responsibility. David is caught between doing the right thing and revamping his career, which brings to mind the ultimatums faced by popular artists in profit-oriented creative industries: speak out on a politically divisive issue, for instance, and risk slashing your fan base and hemorrhaging sales. An expressly political filmmaker who has also been called a “corporate populist,” and who embraces commercial genres and lucrative product placements (the Nike swag is ubiquitous), Lee is certainly attuned to the difficulties of honoring one’s principles while maintaining the hustle.

Unfortunately, this first hour of domestic drama and soul-searching is also tonally bewildering. Its overt symbolism (David’s Mount Olympus is Dumbo’s Olympia Building); broad, theatrical performance styles; and hyper-expressive score by Howard Drossin betray a camaraderie with the conventions of the classic melodrama. Yet the script’s blunt sincerity, coupled with the eerie artificiality of the Kings’ hyper-curated abode, make its big emotions feel stale and/or unintentionally kitschy. In other words, it sort of feels like a Lifetime movie—more soap opera than psychodrama. The leonine Washington, at the very least, is infinitely watchable; his cocky swagger and sharp shifts to dagger-eyed intensity lend these conversational scenes a certain grit and sense of humor. There’s a moment when, racked by indecision and pacing around his home office, David cries out and invokes his forebears: What would you do, James [Brown]? What would you do, Stevie [Wonder]? Jimi [Hendrix]? Aretha [Franklin]? It’s rather silly, but I can’t deny that Washington delights.

When David finally agrees to pay Kyle’s ransom, his decision is fueled by both moral and practical considerations: The boy is an unofficial member of the family, sure, but failure to act also means backlash that could jeopardize Stackin’ Hits already plummeting rep. Aided by a team of cops (LaChanze plays a brainy sleuth; Dean Winters, the meatheaded muscle), David descends from his perch to carry out the ransom exchange, and the change of scenery—from glossy high-rise to street-level scramble—is demarcated by a switch to a moody, grainier format. Here, Lee’s signatures pop out: An ethereal double-dolly shot captures Detective Bridges (John Douglas Thompson) in close-up as he explains the plan to seize the kidnappers. Drossin’s score turns jazzy and percussive as David and two of the detectives take the 4 subway line up through Manhattan and into the Bronx, where the kidnapper and his lackeys await the drop-off. As demonstrated with his previous Washington collab, the bank-heist thriller Inside Man (2006), Lee has a gift for harmonizing the thrills of multilocation set pieces. With Highest 2 Lowest, he puts his New Yorker and avid sports-fan credentials to work, introducing the city’s communal rhythms and public gatherings as unforeseen hurdles. The Puerto Rican Day Parade is in full swing, clogging the streets around which the drop-off is meant to take place; the Yankees are playing a home game, and rabid Boston-hating fans are packed into the 4 train. The kidnapper, a paragon of street smarts, plays these factors to his advantage, securing the money bag with a few decoys and motorbikers that breeze through the crowds. Brooklynite though David may be, his potty-mouthed rival proves he’s flown too high and forgotten how to fight on land.