Before the Cannes Film Festival gala premiere of Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, the audience was treated to a surprise. The festival director Thierry Frémaux came out on stage to give Denzel Washington an honorary Palme d’Or.
It was a complete shock to the actor, who had flown in between performances of Othello on Broadway. A montage of some of Washington’s greatest work played. The audience erupted in cheers when he said, “King Kong ain’t got s— on me.” I learned that the French call Crimson Tide simply USS Alabama.
The presentation got the audiences extremely hyped up for what was to follow, but Lee’s newest film takes a while to deliver on that excitement. When it does it’s an absolute blast, but it’s a clunky road to get there.
The movie’s secret weapon, in many ways, is not Washington but rather A$AP Rocky, who emerges in the second half to give a performance so fun it’s easy to anoint him the next big movie star.
Highest 2 Lowest is Lee’s spin on Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low, about a shoe exec battling for control of an empire. Lee’s version takes place in present day New York and casts Washington as David King, a record executive whose label Stackin’ Hits was, at least at one point, one of the most influential in the business. Hilarious fake Time, New Yorker, and Rolling Stone covers with Washington’s face adorn the office in his home which is also filled with Basquiats.
But Stackin’ HIts is flailing and on the verge of being sold to a company that freely uses AI, giving Lee a chance to get in some digs at that technology on screen. (For what it’s worth, Lee also has Washington bash the Celtic within the first minutes of the film, and later gets an entire subway’s worth of people chanting “Boston Sucks!” So his personal opinions are layered throughout this enterprise. With that said, “Go Knicks!”)
David has a plan to buy back Stackin’ Hits, but that hits a snag when his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped from his summer basketball camp. (Coached by the real Rick Fox, mind you.) Except, it turns out the kidnappers got the wrong kid and instead took Kyle (Elijah Wright), Trey’s best friend and the son of David’s right hand man and driver, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). Despite the screw up, the kidnapper still demands his $17.5 million in Swiss Francs, which David is now reluctant to pay because of how it might impact his business.
These initial scenes plod along, set to an overbearing and melancholic score by Howad Drossin that is so loud it sometimes stands to drown out the dialogue. It’s a strange choice that undercuts Washington’s performance, stepping on laugh lines and telegraphing the emotion he’s portraying.
But the movie snaps into gear when David decides that, yes, he will cooperate with the cops efforts to retrieve Kyle, obeying the kidnapper’s command to get on the 4 train with a bag full of money and await instructions. What follows is a thrilling sequence during which Lee pulls out all the filmmaking tricks he’s acquired during his long career. As the train heads into Manhattan the car starts to fill up with energized Yankee fans, and then, when it hits the Bronx, we see the scene on the ground.
Not only are the Yanks playing a home game, it’s also the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and legendary bandleader Eddie Palmieri is leading a joyous performance that starts to soundtrack David’s excursion. Lee switches between digital and grainy film stock, imbuing every frame with a love for the city even as David feels the constant threat of his enemy.
The chase marks a turning point for Highest 2 Lowest, which then revs ahead. As it goes on, the question of who Rocky is playing starts to become obvious. He’s Yung Felon, the perpetrator, an aspiring rapper who wants to get David’s attention. Their first meeting is electric with Rocky channeling an anger and desperation that lights a fire under Washington. It can be hard for more inexperienced actors to go up against a titan like Denzel. Instead, the two are perfectly in sync. Also, Yung Felon’s track? Sort of a banger.
Highest 2 Lowest is ultimately about David getting back in touch with his love of music, embracing his passion for the art form over his desire to make money. Yung Felon represents the other path for him: Someone who is on trend but so ambitious he’s driven to crime. And yet even though David’s path is ultimately the righteous one, Rocky steals the show in a way that maybe undercuts the message Lee is trying to put forth.
On screen, Yung Felon turns out to be the next big thing in rap. Off screen, Rocky’s already conquered that. Now he’s come for acting.
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