Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: In “Highest 2 Lowest,” the new film from director Spike Lee, Denzel Washington plays a music mogul faces a moral dilemma as he attempts to protect his friends and family from a kidnapping plot and stave off the takeover of his legendary record label, Stackin’ Hits Records.

CAST: Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, ASAP Rocky, and Ice Spice. Directed by Spike Lee.

REVIEW: When Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” a modern-day reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film “High and Low,” is firing on all cylinders it is a thing of propulsive beauty. A subway chase sequence, based on the car chase in “The French Connection,” is edge of your seat stuff, and a showdown between music mogul David King (Denzel Washington) and rapper Yung Felony (A$AP Rocky), is an acting masterclass with the intensity of a rap battle.

Those scenes represent the movie in full flight, and they are vital and exciting, the kind of filmmaking and performances that jump off the screen. Both scenes up the stakes for everyone involved, which is lucky, because the rest of the film, while fraught with complications, is never imbued with a sense of danger. Sure, there are guns, a kidnapping and a ransom bag filled with 17.5 million dollars, but this isn’t a crime drama.

Not really.

Spike Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox use the kidnapping as a backdrop to explore fatherhood, relevancy in a changing world, ethical dilemmas, legacy and, of course, Lee’s favorite basketball team, the Knicks.

It makes for a dizzying, but uneven film.

The first hour, wallpapered with Howard Drossin’s melodramatic score, paints the gregarious David King as a man who lives up to his last name.  He lives, with his wife Pam (Ilfanesh Hadera) and son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) in a NYC penthouse palace, decorated with museum quality art and mementos from King’s illustrious career. His record label, his life’s work, is about to be sold and he’s willing to risk it all to buy it back. “It’s not a risk,” he tells Pam, “it’s a rebirth.”

The business deal is thrown into jeopardy when a kidnapping plot (NO SPOILERS HERE) throws King’s life and finances into limbo. Forced to reckon with his past, present and future, King must make some very difficult choices.

The second hour, as the kidnapping plot kicks in and the financial talk fades, revs up the film’s momentum as King takes action to resolve the kidnapping and kickstart his personal and professional rebirth.

Howard Hawks once said that a great film has three great scenes and no bad ones, and while “Highest 2 Lowest” has great scenes, and the sheer force of Washington’s work ensures there are no bad ones, it feels as if the puzzle pieces don’t quite fit together. As the character work of the first half gives way to the more exciting second half, the film takes on a disjointed, idiosyncratic feel.

It never settles into a groove, it’s restless, idiosyncratic, mixing tones, themes and even film stocks. Even so, it’s compelling to watch Lee and Washington, two loins in winter, strut their stuff.

Washington hands in a bravura performance, almost Shakespearean in its theatricality. Like Washington said at the Cannes Film Festival before a screening of the film, “King Kong ain’t got s— on me.”

Lee captures that work in a movie that feels like a Spike Lee joint. It’s vibrant, in love with its characters and, even though it feels disordered, it’s a film that feels both contemporary and classic. It’s an utterly unique work that only Spike Lee could have made.

Ultimately, “Highest 2 Lowest” is a story about staying relevant for a new generation, about getting your groove back headlined to two artists who have never lost their groove.