Spike Lee Hates Hip-Hop (and Boston) in ‘Highest 2 Lowest’

‘Do The Right Thing’ Director Adapts Kurosawa For The Online Age

David King (Denzel Washington) has “the best ear” in the music business. He has reigned at the top of his game, but the contemporary age threatens to dethrone him. When his son is kidnapped, King finds himself facing yet another challenge of a world that values tragedy as just another currency for attention. It is hard not to read director Spike Lee into King’s role, which makes it difficult to know if Highest 2 Lowest is an ego trip or one of the most politically conservative manifestos ever put to screen. It is likely both.

Highest 2 Lowest, from debut feature screenwriter Alan Fox, is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low. Fox and Lee move the setting from the Yokohama shoe industry to NYC. If you have seen the original, you will recognize the same general plot and some of the scenes. However, Highest 2 Lowest is a rare, truly transformative yet faithful remake.

Lee has done this before and to controversial results. His 2013 remake of the 2003 Korean film Oldboy is seen by some as one of his worst films. One reviewer said that “everything is wrong with Lee’s version of Park Chan-wook’s notorious, super-violent super-action-thriller”. Highest 2 Lowest seems almost designed to be just as divisive.

Aside from a moment of moral ambivalence, Lee seems to want us to see King as a true hero, willing to stand up for the integrity of his art. We learn early on that his beloved record label Stackin’ Hits is set to be taken over by a conglomerate who will almost certainly reduce the brand to the lowest common denominator. The denominator for Lee and Fox is modern rap, symbolized by the character of Yung Felon (rapper A$AP Rocky).

They see rap as the result of hedonic fatherlessness. Yung Felon idolizes King and his greatest dream is to be essentially musically fathered by him. This is contrasted with King, who represents a morally upright arbiter of Black culture who prioritizes quality over mob mentality and trends. Cancel culture and Internet sentiment play a pivotal role, too. You might be able to see now why Highest 2 Lowest could be a bit incendiary.

Regardless of whether you agree with Lee and Fox, it is admirable that he is willing to take such a bold, culturally unpopular stand. This is fully a Spike Lee joint, including a fourth wall breaking middle finger to the Boston Red Sox and all. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who famously shot Venom and A Star Is Born in the same year, makes you fall in love with the Big Apple almost as much as the director. Yet, it is still a film and, at that, it is imperfect.

The cast is generally solid. Denzel never misses and Jeffrey Wright is subtle yet sturdy as King’s devout Muslim chauffeur Paul Christopher. A$AP Rocky is decent for a musician and has a confrontation with Washington that is easily the highlight of the film.

Dean Winters, who plays Mayhem in Allstate commercials also has a supporting role as the prickly Detective Higgins. Between his appearance and a line about Jake from State Farm, there must have been some crew in-joke about insurance that made it into the script. Winters is a bit of a gag character, which is an odd choice for an otherwise serious movie. At first, my audience seemed to think he was supposed to be the possibly racist, white cop that poses a real threat, but his role gets sillier and falls flat. However, the weakest link is Ilfenesh Hadera as King’s wife Pam. She plays the melodrama too soapily and nearly pulls down the already soapy first act.

The fact that this is Fox’s first feature script occasionally feels like a detriment to the film, especially in that first act. There is some clumsy exposition that should have been removed. One example is where Pam brings up the Ebony Alert notification system, reads aloud what it is from her phone, and then finds out that it does not exist in New York. It felt like Fox needed to mention it, but it came off unnatural.

Highest 2 Lowest is unsurprisingly a very musical film. Every needle drop is great, ranging from Puerto Rican bandleader Eddie Palmieri who has an appearance to James Brown classic R&B to A$AP himself. Yet, the music for most of the film is a heavy-handed, orchestral score from Howard Drossin. It is nearly constant, even playing under many of the dialogue scenes, and sounds like it could have been pulled from Marley & Me.

The movie also spends several minutes near the end having R&B up-and-comer Aiyana-Lee give a FULL performance of a song made for and titled after the movie. She is clearly meant to symbolize what “good music” is. Lee’s shameless plugging of Aiyana-Lee, though, seems to signal that his problem with rap may be more about a lack of sonic openness than a moral dispute.

Highest 2 Lowest has a few major problems, but it is entertaining and compelling enough to make it worth watching at home on Apple TV+. This is a minor effort from Lee that ranks neither at the highest or the lowest of his oeuvre.

Highest 2 Lowest is now playing in limited theaters and will release on Apple TV+ on September 5.