'Highest 2 Lowest' A Review

Highest 2 Lowest is a crime thriller, a remake of Kurosawa's High and Low, directed by Spike Lee. David King(Denzel Washington) is a high-powered music producer and on the eve of a large deal with his label his son is kidnapped and held for ransom.

Washington is captivating as always, just like in Gladiator II, he creates a compelling character by sheer talent and will from the uneven, confused script. Jeffrey Wright is underutilized as his friend/driver but still compelling. The rest of the cast struggles to make anything interesting from the script and come across as mostly wooden and melodramatic. 

The production is inconsistent. The movie opens with a repeated pedestrian drone shot, the first 2/3rd's are strangled by an incessant old-timey orchestral score, the shot set-ups and framing are frequently bizarre. All this together just makes for a profound confusion in tone. It kinda smooths out and gets interesting in the final third with some more of Spike Lee's patented inspired sequences and shots as well as a more appropriate and compelling soundtrack, unfortunately it's a case of too-little too-late. Perhaps the script or Lee wanted to stick too close to the original or perhaps the production was rushed, either way it just feels underbaked, erratic, and dated.

Lower tier Spike Lee but worth watching for Washington and the lively third act. 

Currently in theaters.

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