After a long career in the music business, David King (Denzel Washington) decides to reduce the record label Stackin ‘Hits Records, before his musical inheritance – he won 50 Grammy Awards – Kraans and AI the business is completely copied. He wants to get the pleasure in music back. His penthouse in a luxurious New York residential tower is therefore full of art on which black music is celebrated, from jazz to Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. In addition, artworks by black artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley and Gordon Parks pass, the portrait of Malcolm X, about whom director Spike Lee made a film in 1992 with in the lead role Denzel Washington. Highest 2 Lowest Marks Lee’s fifth collaboration with the charismatic actor.
Kings dream comes to an end when his son is abducted and a lot of ransom is demanded. If it turns out that the abductor was mistaken and took the son of his driver, a moral dilemma follows. Is he going to pay the ransom, money he needs to get Stackin ‘hits in possession again?
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Read also: This interview with Spike Lee from 2018
Highest 2 Lowest is modern filmmaking in optima forma. All technical means are taken out of the cupboard, with drone shots, kinetic mounting and razor-sharp night images. The film is, according to Lee’s own saying, a “reinterpretation” of High and Low (1963), A Japanese film from one of his heroes, Akira Kurosawa. A lot has changed in terms of film technology in sixty years. But you can wonder if this is a blessing, because what do you do with that technique? Do you keep it simple or are you blinded by the abundance of cinematic means? Highest 2 Lowest Feels soulless, and that is disastrous for a film about the soul of art of black Americans and the need to preserve it.
It is striking that Lee ends his film with a soul performance in Kings Penthouse. Singer Sula C Sing (Aiyana-Lee) is accompanied by a pianist, but what we hear is a crowded arrangement with band and orchestra. It actually says everything that is wrong with Highest 2 Lowest: Something that could have been simple and effective becomes something bombastic.
Just like Sula can sing (the C in her name stands for ‘Can’: Sula Can Sing), Lee can film excellent, but it will be really compelling nowhere. Just soulless is the way Apple TV+ treats the film. Instead of a release in the cinema, as happens in some countries, he can only be seen on their streaming platform in the Netherlands.
Hunt for the kidnapper
Just like Kurosawas High and Lowa film adaptation of Ed McBains thriller King’s Ransomconsists Highest 2 Lowest From two parts. The first part mainly takes place in the penthouse. The second part revolves around the hunt for the kidnapper and the frantic attempt to find the ransom. In the difference between those two parts, Kurosawa showed his mastery. He used a well-arranged mise-en-scene in the apartment: a precise placement of actors in beautiful compositions. With the crucial detail that the camera did not move, that only happened during the manhunt on the abductor. But what does Lee do? He almost always moves his camera, so that the contrast between stagnation and movement is lost. A standstill that also had a goal: taking the time to reflect on a moral issue. Pay or not pay ransom for someone who is not a family?
This does not mean that Highest 2 Lowest Totally failed, on the contrary. Lee is at its best in the dynamic second part, with the virtuoso sequence in which King delivers the ransom in the midst of baseball fans in the metro and a Puerto Rican street party. Apart from his overactive style Highest 2 Lowest A enjoyable film about the liveliness of black art and culture.