First things first. Spike Lee opens his latest film with a bravura flounce that only this awkward master could carry off (or would attempt). The camera takes its cue from Gordon MacRae’s version of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ – the opening number from Oklahoma! – to fly through an eye-wateringly perfect New York city and meet Denzel Washington on a penthouse balcony with a view of the urban expanse.
This is not the city of broken pavements and scuffed bodegas. This is plate glass, liveried doormen and lifts the size of ballrooms.
We soon learn that Washington’s David King is a music mogul of the old school. Every surface of his enormous apartment is covered with the most fashionable effusions of African-American culture. Not just paintings and photographs but also framed covers of key novels.
Lee is nothing if not a gifted ironist. He won’t need to be told that, though Oklahoma! does have something like a psychopath as a secondary character, that opening anthem is viewed as a hymn to pioneer optimism. “Everything’s going my way,” indeed. But whose way? “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock,” Washington railed in Lee’s Malcolm X. “Plymouth Rock landed on us!”
I’ve just seen Saipan, The Movie. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well
Highest 2 Lowest review: Spike Lee’s film about an old-school music mogul is never boring but lacks cohesion
The Movie Quiz: On which streaming service will you see the next Bond film?
Honey Don’t! review: This queered-up take on noir cliches amounts to nothing
All of which is by way of preparing you for a film that never quite arrives. Lee is here attempting a retooling – a “cover” as David King might have it – of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime movie High and Low (itself taken from Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom).
There is certainly a sense here of how disconnected King has become from the streets. A crisis throws him back among the hard-scrabbling citizens who made him what he is. But too much of Highest 2 Lowest feels knocked off in a hugely expensive hurry. The action sequences are perfunctory. The old-bloke attempts to engage with the contemporary music scene border on the embarrassing. Some of the casting is unfortunate. The film is never boring, but, once that delightful opening winds down, the action clunks where it should purr.
King, you won’t be surprised to hear, is opposed to the notion of AI taking over the business. He wants to regain control of Stackin’ Hits Records and return it to what it was when he was still known for having “the best ear in the business”. I regret to tell you the film takes that last phrase literally. Each time King encounters a new artist he places a hand behind one ear and inclines it forward, like Donald Trump pretending he can’t hear awkward questions over the roar of Marine One.
The crux comes when King’s son Trey – to whom he hasn’t paid quite enough attention – appears to be abducted and a ransom of $17.5 million is demanded. The situation is almost immediately complicated, and King is confronted with what the film believes to be a moral dilemma. Save the music industry’s integrity or save the boy? I hate to tell you, Spike, but one of those two may have died before the film even began.
King, of course, takes the law into his own hands and, as part of an increasingly absurd escalation, ends up relying on his rap skills to win the day. (I’m not quite joking here.) Getting on board with the later stages of Highest 2 Lowest requires an almighty leap of faith. Many found it possible to make that jump at the Cannes premiere, but the rest of us – after celebrating decent supporting turns from Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky – wished the undeniable energy was matched by comparable cohesion.
Streams on Apple TV+ from Friday, September 5th
