Movie Scene: Spike Lee needs to ‘wake up’

The prospect of a new Spike Lee ‘joint’ is something to be hailed. The man who brought films like ‘Do The Right Thing,’ ‘Jungle Fever,’ ‘Malcolm X’ and ‘Blackkklansman’ to the screen has long been a director full of fury and righteousness as well as a fierce defender of the African American experience.

This week, Lee takes on his first remake with ‘Highest 2 Lowest’, based on the 1963 film ‘High & Low’ by Akira Kurosawa.

Transporting the book to his beloved NYC, Lee’s version tells the story of music mogul David King (Denzel Washington), a man of considerable wealth living in a (very) high rise locale with wife Pam (Ifinesh Hadera) and son Trey (Aubrey Joseph), the latter hoping to follow his father’s footsteps. Trey and his best friend Kyle, whose father Paul (Jeffrey Wright) is David’s best friend, get kidnapped at a basketball camp with a ransom of $17.1m dollars posted. David immediately says he’ll pay but then Trey is released leaving David in a moral dilemma about whether to pay a ransom for a son that isn’t his own.

As much as I love Spike Lee films and the anger that exudes through every pore, ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is Lee at his most timid, and it’s a shame.

Working off Alan Fox’s screenplay which Lee himself had a hand in rewriting, ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is very much at the lower end of Lee’s oeuvre. For a so-called ‘thriller’ involving kidnap plots and life-changing decisions, the film is incredibly low energy. For the first hour, ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ plays out like 1996’s ‘Ransom’ only Mel Gibson is now Denzel Washington. It’s all extremely talky but has many well-written scenes with both Washington and Wright on excellent form, delivering every line of dialogue and dominating every scene masterly.

The second hour is taken up with the repercussions of David’s decisions and is more action-oriented with discussions around how social media will receive David’s decisions. It’s also a shame that the action sequences, involving a train full of Yankee fans and a chase through NYC’s Puerto Rican Day parade, don’t convey the suspense they deserve.

Spike loves his city and anyone who has seen his films knows that. So I don’t know whether it was his desire to highlight NYC or his desire to be reverential to Kurosawa, but his direction, while competent, doesn’t have the same edge to it; a kidnap thriller lacking suspense isn’t good. Plus, where’s the anger? A few anti-police barbs aside, it’s completely missing – although the same can’t be said for an overbearing score.

The film’s climax is something of an anti-climax although it does feature a nice impromptu rap battle between Washington and ASAP Rocky, who gives a good account of himself.

Despite some great performances ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ shows that Lee has to – in parlance he himself has often used – ‘wake up!’