Highest 2 Lowest

There’s simply no improving upon Akira Kurosawa, not that others haven’t tried. Seven Samurai begat The Magnificent Seven, The Hidden Fortress inspired Star Wars, and Ikiru was reconfigured into Living. But anything by the director of Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and BlacKkKlansman will be a Spike Lee Joint, even a remake. And now, with Highest 2 Lowest, he’s transposed the action of Kurosawa’s 1963 classic from Yokohama, Japan, to — where else? — New York City and reteamed with his greatest collaborator: Denzel Washington.

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Their fifth movie together isn’t a remake so much as a remix, with Washington starring as David King, an appropriately named music mogul who faces a moral conundrum after his son is kidnapped. Except he hasn’t been: due to a mixup on the part of the kidnappers, who aren’t exactly criminal masterminds, it’s King’s godson who’s been ransomed for $17.5 million — and, as much as his close friend and confidant Paul (Jeffrey Wright) might want him to, King isn’t exactly inclined to pay up once he realizes the truth. Wealthy but cash poor, King had been planning on leveraging most of his assets to buy a controlling interest in Stackin’ Hits, the label he founded decades earlier that is now drifting beyond his control as the industry changes and he struggles to adapt.

The main appeal of any movie starring Denzel Washington is simply watching Denzel Washington, and so it is here. You can see the gears turning behind King’s eyes as he ponders the pros and cons of spending almost all of his fortune on what he dismissively calls a “kidnapper’s mistake.” A music lover whose decades in the industry have made him more concerned with the business side of things, he isn’t always the most sympathetic protagonist — even if it’s easy to see why he’s reluctant to part with such a vast sum of money.

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Wright is no slouch either, of course, and he’s in rare form as the father of the kidnapee. Infinitely less fortunate than King but fiercely loyal to him, he’s somewhere between an adoptive brother and a hanger-on depending on your perspective. The contrast between King’s heavy-lies-the-crown melancholy and Paul’s quiet desperation makes for some of Highest 2 Lowest’s best scenes, with both actors avoiding the clunky, on-the-nose lines that screenwriter Alan Fox sprinkles throughout other characters’ dialogue.

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Lee’s films have always had a musicality to them, but rarely this overtly. A song played on repeat provides a vital clue to the kidnapper’s identity, King is said to have “the best ears in the business,” and Howard Drossin’s vibrant score is like a character unto itself. Music and plot intertwine most seamlessly in a sequence taking place during the Puerto Rican Day Parade, with King attempting to pay off the kidnappers as revered bandleader Eddie Palmieri performs on the street in a kind of diegetic soundtrack. It’s a bravura display from both the kidnappers and the filmmaker featuring a subway ride, motorcycle-riding criminals handing a cash-filled backpack to one another like a baton in a relay race, and a squad car attempting to keep eyes on everything. You’d be forgiven for comparing it favorably to The French Connection’s legendary chase sequence, to which it bears more than a passing resemblance.

The main appeal of any movie starring Denzel Washington is simply watching Denzel Washington, and so it is here.

The whole affair is almost joyful in its controlled chaos as Lee conducts the madness as only a maestro of his stature could; though much of the film is sedate and talky, this extended set piece is a reminder that Lee and Washington’s most recent collaboration was the excellent heist thriller Inside Man. Lee could just as easily have made a career of directing action flicks, and though he’s best known for his social commentary, he’s as comfortable with fast-paced genre thrills as he is with fourth-wall-breaking monologues.

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So while it wouldn’t be true to say that Lee’s film matches the heights of the movie that inspired it, neither would it be fair not to praise him for putting a memorable spin on Kurosawa’s classic. Highest 2 Lowest, like its director, marches to the beat of its own drum and is fiercely, unapologetically itself. We might not need more remakes, but we do need more movies that feel original regardless of their source material.