It would have been so much easier and simpler to have seen Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest three months ago in Cannes, but easy-access press screenings were’t scheduled. Lee wanted the media bounce of a gala black-tie screening but cared not for persons like myself having a looksee, obviously calculating that reviews would be mixed.
I finally saw Highest 2 Lowest last night, and guess what? It’s mildly fine — a smoothly engaging, well-jiggered kidnapping drama for the whole family — a total popcorn movie that’s more or less about celebrating the color and vibrancy and musicality of New York City’s black and brown culture…a Spike joint that, for me at least, never bored or dragged (even during the first plot-light, character-driven hour).
Swanky Brooklyn pad, a high-profile son-snatching, a $17.5 million ransom in Swiss currency, a nifty second-act chase sequence, etc. Whatever, bruh…enjoy the ride.
This is basically a movie about wealth and happiness. Spike is flush, Denzel is bucks-up, NYC looks beautiful. It’s all good. (Did I feel left out because of my own lean portfolio? Yeah, kinda, but I got over that.)
Tightly assembled and visually punched-up (dare I say “balls-up”?), H2L is well-charged fun…panache, pizazz, an emphatically flush vibe (i.e., it’s kinda wealth-porny).
It boasts several fine, filled-out performances by several commanding, good-looking actors (Denzel Washington, ASAP Rocky, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera), plus ample servings of luminous Matty Libatique images. And it begins with a Rodgers & Hammerstein cityscape montage that’s pure emotional pleasure.
It goes down easy, man — schmaltzy, emotionally heightened and made to charm and entertain the popcorn-munching serfs (including schmoes like yours truly).
Akira Kurosawa’s noirish High and Low (‘63) struck everyone as a grim, hard-nosed, visually unengaging downer — Spike’s remake is pretty much a tonal opposite.
