The following is a conversation between Robert Daniels and Odie Henderson conducted over email about Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s noir “High and Low,” starring Denzel Washington as David King—the music mogul forced to pay a ransom from a hip-hop artist named Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky) when Yung Felon accidentally kidnaps the son of his assistant Christopher (Jeffrey Wright). We’re taking the 4 train Spike’s “Highest 2 Lowest.”
Robert Daniels:
Sit down and let’s talk. “Highest 2 Lowest” has been in theaters since mid-August and now it’s coming to Apple TV+ to stream. We’ve gotta speak about this re-teaming of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington; it’s their first film together since “Inside Man.” Though we’re both equally high on this latest joint, we’re both coming at this from two very different generations. Which is what the movie is sorta about!
In my 3 ⅕ star review for RogerEbert.com, I wrote that “Highest 2 Lowest” is “Unabashedly epic, fearlessly funny, and proudly Black, “Highest 2 Lowest” might derive from a Japanese filmmaker. But its soul clearly resides in Lee.” Considering what happened with “Oldboy” and “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” two remakes of classics that didn’t pan out well, I was sweating as the Cannes premiere for this fired up. Denzel is acting, acting. A$AP Rocky, who plays the Tsutomu Yamazaki role in this remake of “High Low,” more than holds his own with Denzel. Jeffrey Wright quietly grounds this film. The Puerto Rican day parade is up there with Spike’s best scenes.
In your four-star review for the Boston Globe, you wrote: “The respect Lee has for the legendary Japanese director is evident in the ways he reimagines the classic scenes from “High and Low.” Additionally, like Lee’s movies, Kurosawa’s films often interrogated the gulf between the haves and have-nots, treating the latter with grace and understanding.”
With lots to cover: Spike’s thoughts on hiphop, the legacy of his partnership with Denzel, and commentaries about contemporary celebrity and artistry, I’ve already got a few questions to volley on:
What were your expectations for Denzel and Spike? What do you think about that odd opening with “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from “Oklahoma”? Also, let’s talk about that score.
It’s one of the bigger film’s demerits among critics and upon rewatching it, I kinda agree. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Lend me your thoughts, my brother.
Odie Henderson:
Back up this post from the front to the back…
I have to start by telling you a story. I was invited to the premiere of this movie in Da People’s Republic of Brooklyn. The line was around the block two times, and almost everybody on it was Blackety-Black-Black and dressed to the nines! I had on Dockers and a nice shirt. I would have worn a suit and tie, but common sense got the better of me. “Ain’t nobody comin’ to see you, Odie!” I thought.
Anyway, my Black ass wasn’t on the list when I got to the ticket people.
After some back and forth, including showing my invitation, they gave me a ticket for a seat that was in the balcony. Four stories up in the balcony. The view to the screen was straight down, and made me so dizzy that I almost fell on the people in the next row.
Making matters worse, I was on the far right side of the theater, the worst place for anyone with a blind left eye. I’d have to turn my body in my seat AND look down to see the movie. And the seat was so tight I felt like Megan Thee Stallion sitting in a bathroom sink.
“Oh, eff this!” I said, and left the theater. I went to the McDonalds around the corner instead.
Guess you could say I went from highest to lowest.
Thank God I’d already seen Spike and Denzel’s latest joint. In fact, my review went up the same day as the Brooklyn premiere. I loved this movie.
But to answer your question, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was cautiously optimistic, because I knew Spike loved Kurosawa so much that he would do his best to honor the late directing legend. Then I remembered Spike also loved Bill Gunn, and you saw how that turned out.
The use of “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’” over this film’s credits reminded me of the last Spike and Denzel collaboration, “Inside Man.” That film’s credits were accompanied by “Chaiyya Chaiyya.” The choice of that song, from the Bollywood film, “Dil Se” seemed inexplicable at first. Yet the odd juxtaposition set the tone for the adventure that followed.
A Spike Lee Joint’s opening credits always foreshadow. When I heard the booming voice of “Da 5 Bloods” co-star Norm Lewis belting out the opening number of “Oklahoma” over images of New York City, I immediately busted out laughing. “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow,” sang Lewis, but the haze captured by cinematographer Matthew Libatique was hitting the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge.
I was confused, then I remembered how the last Broadway revival of “Oklahoma” brought out the racial conflict inherent in the musical without changing a single spoken word or sung lyric. The conflict between the haves and have-nots was always there, just waiting to be discovered.
That’s when I knew what Spike was up to: This was going to be a tale of a brother who made it, and another brother who coveted that rise to the top. Kurosawa fueled “High and Low” with that same tension. I saw the use of Black music here as a companion piece to how Lee used basketball in “He Got Game.” More on that next time.
As for Howard Drossin’s score, it’s a bit much. Part of me believes that it’s slathered on with a heavy hand to symbolize David King’s increasing anxiety and paranoia. The other part of me won’t lie: I missed Terence Blanchard. Blanchard’s score for “Inside Man” is just as muscular, but he’s far more judicious in underscoring Detective Keith Frazer’s hostage situation anxiety than Drossin did with David King.
When I watched “Highest 2 Lowest” the second time, I was a bit more aggravated by the score. I might have agreed with your 3-1/2 stars had I written my review after that second viewing.
In your review, you wrote: “Wright in particular is given greater space to breathe, offering the kind of hardened salt-of-the-earth persona that brings Washington’s King closer to home.” What did you think about the choice to make Christopher, Wright’s character, a Muslim? Elaborate more on the relationship between King and Christopher, please. Do you see a correlation between Christopher, King and Yung Felon?
Also, did you think the scenes before the kidnapping were clunky? That’s the other repeated criticism I’ve seen besides the score.
Considering that Nick Tuturro cameo, imagine how it felt filing a review of this movie in a Boston newspaper. It felt wonderful, let me tell you.
Hit me back like Mr. October hit them home runs for my beloved Yankees, my brother.
Robert:
Odie you should’ve sung “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from the balcony, then they really would’ve been coming to see you. **load David Ruffin screaming ya’ll would be nothin’ without me**
But to answer your question, Wright as Christopher is playing a combination of Toshiro Mifune’s secretary Kawanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi)and his chauffeur (played by Yutaka Sada). His hardened, cut-throat style recalls Kawanishi’s desire to get ahead, played to great effect here by Christopher’s early willingness to resort to violence. The chauffeur character worships Mifune like a God in “High & Low,” so it makes sense for Spike to want to keep some sense of deification in the film.
We’re told that Christopher converted to Islam while incarcerated, which for the director who made “Malcolm X,” almost makes sense as a character detail. Christopher’s religion gives him the grounding that King seemingly lacks, which is why Christopher is often the only one available to hold King accountable, to speak his language and remind him of his faith.
To me, Yung Felon feels like a combination of King and Christopher. You and I both grew up with Black men like King and Christopher, men looking for any way out of the hood.
I remember being in third grade and my teacher telling us that none of us were talented enough athletes or musicians to leave so we needed to find a better path. He was also part of the nation of Islam and told us that dinosaurs were invented by the white man to distract Black folks from freedom, and also whipped us with a giant paddle if we acted out of line. So you know, like the Chicago school system, you win-some, you lose-some. In any case, I think about the first point of what he said a lot, and I think it’s particularly relevant here.
King is the guy who things broke the right way with, so he made it. He’s the exception. Christopher is who Yung Felon might become, if he’s lucky, once he leaves prison, a devout man who, after fighting against everybody and everyone, finds some peace with a family but never forgets where he came from. Christopher, in that sense, is closer to Yung Felon’s reality.
Also, not gonna lie, I find the first half to be clunky. Watching it at Cannes, I was sweatin’. I really thought Spike had fumbled it. The first half is so sterile, so over calibrated, and so made-for-tv. And yet, on rewatch, I sorta believe that’s what Spike wanted. He wanted the odd artificiality of the penthouse to so contrast with the gritty second half, so he allows the first half to grate a bit. Maybe that’s assigning too much credit to Spike, but hey, white critics do that for far less established white filmmakers all the time.
Speaking of the Yankees, let’s talk about the Puerto Rican day parade. Were you cackling at the “Boston sucks” chants? How does the film relate to Spike’s previous depictions of New York? (it’s fascinating seeing this Brooklyn man in the Bronx)
Also, where does this sequence rank in Spike’s filmography? When I wrote about it, I said it might be his best in terms of form and execution.
Put back these rebounds like Patrick Ewing.
Odie:
I am sure they would have moved me off that balcony, and to a nice floor seat, had I started singing Norm Lewis’ version of “I Got Plenty O’ Nothin’” from “Porgy and Bess.” And by that, I mean they would have flung me off that balcony like I was David King’s Nike backpack full of Swiss francs.
I didn’t think the opening section of the film was clunky. Screenwriter Alan Fox’s take on Kurosawa’s first section of “High and Low” mimics the original’s leisurely observations about Toshiro Mifune’s business. For Mifune, it’s gotta be the shoes (to quote Mars Blackmon), and that’s kind of dull unless you love discussions of process as much as I do.
When Yung Felon tells King that he needs to get on the 4 train at Borough Hall, I knew the Yankees were going to be involved in some way. The 4 train also stops at Wall St. and Broadway, a stone’s throw away from the site of Spike and D’s last movie, “Inside Man.” I don’t think any in-joke or Easter egg I see in a Spike Lee Joint is by accident—notice the shout-out to the film’s distributor A24 on Yung Felon’s apartment door—so that 4 train had to be part of the plan before Spike shot that sequence.
And since the 4 train runs from Brooklyn to the Bronx, it feels like Spike is sharing the kind of interborough love that New Yorkers don’t always have. Hometown borough pride is a hell of a thing, akin to how Chicagoans feel about where they come from in Chi-Town. But the Bronx has a bigger symbolic role here, even before we get to that incredible Puerto Rican parade. It’s the birthplace of hiphop. Since “Highest 2 Lowest” uses hiphop as a possible way out of the ‘hood, it makes sense that Yung Felon would “get paid” there.
Is it me, or did you get the impression that David King was from the Boogie Down Bronx? He seemed comfortable in Yung Felon’s neighborhood, and he only got rattled by that pit bull. I’ve seen the movie twice, and I jumped both times. That was muscle memory reminders of all the years I ran from dogs in my Jersey City ‘hood.
Had David King done a bid, he might have been Jake Shuttlesworth, Denzel’s character in “He Got Game.” In that film, Spike used basketball as another way for Black folks to be “delivert” from poverty. That always seemed to be the only ways out for us, right? Your third grade teacher’s advice would apply to me: my rap skills are practically non-existent and, despite the hops I got from jumping fences while running from canines, I’m so near-sighted I would have accidentally leaped through the basketball hoop instead of dunking the ball.
But back to that Puerto Rican Day Parade sequence. First, let’s pour one out for the late Eddie Palmieri, making his second appearance on a Spike Lee Joint soundtrack (he’s on “Crooklyn”’s as well). I saw “Highest 2 Lowest” the day before the musical legend died, and his last appearance onscreen was more than just magical. Palmieri is the propulsion underneath that fantastic action sequence, a blast of Boricua pride that begins with Spike’s reunion with Rosie Perez. I’ve always said that all Spike Lee joints are musicals under the skin, and this is a delightful dance number featuring motorcycles, trains, musicians and literal and figurative mayhem caused by the cops. (Dean Winters’s Allstate ad character, “Mayhem,” even gets name-checked by Christopher.)
Just look at how Spike’s longtime editor Barry Alexander Brown (working with Allyson C. Johnson) edits every single backpack swap—it’s action movie ballet.
Let me close out in this musical vein. What did you think of the needle drops here? “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” “Love is the Message” and others feel like deliberate commentaries on what the characters are feeling. What about the scene where David King asks our biggest Black musical legends for advice?
And what about that Aiyana-Lee number? The second time I saw “Highest 2 Lowest,” I went with a friend who said that I looked like I was ready to jump out of my seat and into the screen when she sang the film’s title song. If she doesn’t get that Oscar, I might have to go Yung Felon on the Academy.
Drop that science in your final bars.
Robert:
To go back to your first point, King is from Yung Felon’s neighborhood. There’s a line where Christopher mentions that Yung Felon is from their old hood, which is why Yung Felon looks up to KING David so much.
The needledrops are fascinating, and so is the role of hiphop. It’s telling that almost none of the music is contemporary. Hell, none of it is from this century. It’s all stuff King and Christopher probably listened to while growing up. Considering King is supposed to have the best ears in the business, if he’s retreated into only listening to oldies, then you can guess why he hasn’t found a hit singer for Stackin’ Hits records in a bit.
The only hiphop we hear is Yung Felon’s music, which King initially vibes with, but then rejects. Much has already been said about Spike’s conservatism regarding gangsta rap (see this Pitchfork article as it pertains to this movie) and I do think you could argue that what happens to Yung Felon goes hand-in-hand with the soundtrack choices as a repudiation of the music.
King is always looking to the past, such as asking Black musical legends like Aretha for advice, which is maybe another cue for why he actually needs to leave Stackin’ Hits records behind. It also might be why Christopher ultimately must leave King behind too. Neither can hold onto the past if they hope to survive for the future.
Still, when we get to the end, we hear Aiyana-Lee performing the film’s title track. It’s a phenomenal song with an incredible performance, particularly behind Aiyana-Lee’s powerful voice. She reminds King of the music he loves: smooth voices and complex melodies. And while she is obviously phenomenal, narratively it probably feeds into Spike’s own musical tastes too. I said on the Hits Factory podcast, and I stand by this, that the more interesting choice would’ve been having a different kind of hiphop artist in King’s living room, allowing Spike to make a more nuanced on the genre.
But I guess Spike didn’t want to fight that battle after fighting with Boston sports fans.