Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee’s latest joint is, above all, a celebration. He fêtes New York in his first hometown film in a decade, and his longtime collaborator, Denzel Washington. He pays off his longterm admiration for Akira Kurosawa, in a loose remake of the Japanese director’s 1963 noir High And Low. Lee even decks out his hero’s base in the blue and orange of his beloved New York Knicks. For all the high stakes and desperate moments of this thrilling crime drama, its filmmaker is having the time of his life.

Not that that’s immediately obvious. We meet Washington’s David King in his Brooklyn penthouse, planning the biggest deal of his career alongside his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and earnest son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). King is pressured and fast-talking, taking another huge risk in a career filled with them. Mere hours later, a kidnapping has put all his plans on hold, and detectives are swarming his house, recommending that he pay a ransom that threatens everything he’s worked for. It makes for an extremely tense first act, with King and his family facing a horrible dilemma and little sense that any of this is going to end well; an impression furthered by the worsening grimaces of the usually unflappable Washington. But Lee has surprises in store.

As the mystery unfolds, he shuffles the tone between noir, action, revenge drama and something that feels very much like a musical. Admittedly, that’s signalled early on: Lee opens with a soaring rendition of ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’’ over cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s Technicolor-looking New York, drenched in warmth and promise. His regular composer Howard Drossin creates a lush and at times almost overbearing score, more akin to a 1950s Western epic or Broadway blockbuster than a hip-hop drama. That’s before we get to the outright performance scenes, huge outdoor dance extravaganza, or the confrontation that plays close to a rap battle.

But it’s not just style; the substance is all here. Lee is interested in what a legacy looks like, and in what makes the work worth the effort. There are reflections about good money versus bad, about the gap between reputation and self-respect and between art and commerce, and how social media might change that calculus. Washington’s King plays out every ounce of the subtext in a performance that combines furious commitment and a sense of lightness, like jazz. The final result could perhaps lose a few minutes for a tighter running time and a little more focus, but that’s nitpicking. The overwhelming final impression, from top to bottom and highest 2 lowest, is of the sheer joy Lee takes in his work and all the glorious possibilities it affords.