‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is Denzel Washington at his best

Before our very eyes, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, who are now 68 and 70 years old, respectively, transformed from brazen young geniuses into Hollywood’s elder gentlemen. Both men have achieved enough in their careers that it might be acceptable—even encouraged—for them to make a few popular films in their later years that capitalize on their abilities. However, Spike and Denzel continue to push the boundaries and bring out the best in one another with Highest 2 Lowest, their fifth joint project as director and star.

A sweeping view that ascends from the Brooklyn Bridge to a luxurious apartment atop the Olympia building in Dumbo, where record executive David King (Washington) is on the phone, opens the picture, which is a remake of the iconic director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 drama High and Low. King has a gorgeous wife (Ilfenesh Hadera), a kid named Trey (Aubrey Joseph) who is a rising basketball player, and an apartment that makes everyone who visits envious.

Trey is the target of kidnappers who demand a ransom of $17.5 million in Swiss francs, endangering all that casual excellence. It turns out that the kidnappers unintentionally took Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of King’s chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright), rather than Trey, complicating King’s seemingly simple decision to pay the ransom.

The class barrier and whether Toshiro Mifune’s (Seven Samurai) chauffeur’s son is worth as much as his own are the main issues facing the shoe CEO in Kurosawa’s original. King’s reluctance to pay the ransom is more personal, but there are aspects of that here as well, especially in the way the investigating police handle Paul, an ex-con.

In response to an acquisition from an anonymous company, King recently reached an agreement to repurchase the majority stake in his own record label. It’s his life’s work, and even though he’s old enough to retire, he can’t bear the thought of a heartless company using his back catalog for insurance ads.

Additionally, the anonymous kidnapper takes pleasure in disparaging King’s masculinity in each phone conversation. Jay Z, a businessman who constructed his empire piece by piece from Brooklyn’s Marcy Street slums to the boardroom, seems to be the inspiration for King’s story and, in fact, his appearance. You can understand why King finds it unacceptable when a faceless opponent treats him disrespectfully when Washington displays the unmatched swagger he brings to every role.

As King negotiates Kyle’s future, Highest 2 Lowest thus far necessitates a certain amount of patience. However, as King and the cops start to implement their plan, the movie really picks up speed. Lee uses a Puerto Rican street celebration and a train headed for the Bronx as playgrounds for his vision, staging some of his best action sequences since Inside Man (another Washington collaboration).

We also get to know several incredibly talented supporting cast members as the movie goes on. Rapper A$AP Rocky delivers a particularly powerful performance as Young Felon, a rising artist. Among the film’s best are his sequences with Washington, which glimmer with an uncomfortably intense intensity.

If there is a flaw in the movie, it would be Lee’s sporadic excesses. Several rapid double takes (two successive frames of the identical individuals slapping hands) and hard cuts are among the many questionable stylistic decisions. Throughout the first half of the movie, Howard Drossin’s soaring orchestral score nearly drowns out the speech. (Lee also enjoys making fun of Boston with his characters, though I thought that specific affectation was funny instead of annoying.)

Additionally, there are scenes in the script that come perilously near to being in my backyard. King is often begging Trey to stop talking on his phone, and although though he works as a record executive, his musical preferences appear to have stalled since the year 2000. Several hectoring lectures against the destructive force of social media, which has turned attention into the sole real currency, are also included in the movie.

Lee has never been one for subtlety, and he has earned the right to express his opinions about younger generations as he sees fit. On the fourth or fifth occasion, however, we are informed that the true antagonist of the film is not Kyle’s abduction, but rather society, and it begins to seem a bit silly.

Considering that Lee has been making daring decisions like this throughout his career, those are little complaints. Highest 2 Lowest delivers exactly what you would anticipate from a Spike Lee song: An audacious, fun film that only he could have produced. movie’s worth seeing Highest 2 Lowest in cinemas during its brief two-week run before movie switches to Apple TV+, especially because Denzel Washington is still giving it his all.

***1/2 rating (out of 4)

Highest 2 Lowest is currently showing in theaters.

Kevin Slane writes on culture and entertainment as a staff writer for Boston.com. Movie reviews, streaming guidelines, celebrities, and Boston activities are the main topics of his work.