Highest 2 Lowest – REVIEW

“All $$ ain’t good $$”


Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Princess Nokia, and Ice Spice
Synopsis: “When a powerful music mogul is targeted by a ransom plot, he is forced to fight for his family and legacy while jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.”

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Spike Lee is undoubtedly one of the biggest living legends in cinema. I don’t think anything is ever gonna take away the impact he’s left. Admittedly, his filmography is a terribly embarrassing blind spot for me, but I’ve seen most of the heavy hitters, barring Malcolm X. Wild that I haven’t gotten to that yet. That’s besides the point, though. The next point is… another movie I haven’t seen, and that’s High and Low, one of the many celebrated movies from the just-as-celebrated Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I’m not gonna make this a history lesson or anything, but to keep things short, this is not the first time that Lee has "re-interpreted" classic Asian cinema. I use “re-interpret” because that description is from Lee himself, which he first used for his remake of Oldboy just over a decade ago. That had its controversies, but interestingly enough, Highest 2 Lowest, Lee’s reinterpretation of Kurosawa’s 1963 classic, doesn’t have that same level of contention. What I personally think is the difference is actually two factors: this is the longest break in between movies he’s had, and he’s back with Denzel Washington. Washington, his sixth collaboration with Lee in over three decades and the first since 2006’s Inside Man, is still on his a-game here, but when’s he not? Funny enough, A$AP Rocky is actually very charming here, and it helps that the catchy-as-hell song he made for it works into the plot very well. Unfortunately, everything else is just a mess, borderline incoherent at times. This story’s been proven to work thanks to the original novel, King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, as well as Kurosawa. Simply put, Lee’s version is a crime thriller that isn’t thrilling at nearly any moment, save for a small rap battle between Washington and Rocky at the end of the movie. The script is also very odd, especially with its dialogue. It never breaks out of that “first-time screenwriter” urge to make every line so painfully obvious that I wouldn’t have to think about what’s happening. What tanks Highest 2 Lowest for me, and what is the most shocking, is the music. Not the soundtrack made for the movie, the actual score. I haven’t seen such a massive example of cognitive dissonance between the film and a film score in ages. You could see Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright walking through Brooklyn, and what’s playing in the background? Something that’s closer to Chrono Trigger, like they’re trying to find party members at Yankee Stadium. It’s jarring and took me out of the movie every time, and it almost brings down the entire film. It doesn’t help that it’s typically blaring and overtaking the dialogue a lot too. Highest 2 Lowest should’ve worked. I’m not gonna say it would’ve been a slam dunk, but all of the ingredients were there and should’ve been cooked properly. It just didn’t have the extra spice that it needed.


Ryan’s Grade: C-