We’ve seen a lot of the “Director wrestling with his legacy” movies over the past few years. Perhaps the pandemic reminded everyone that they are indeed mortal, perhaps we’re getting a batch of some of our finest director’s that are just getting to be that age, perhaps we’ve been too mean to the baby boomers. Regardless, Coppola was so determined to get his point across he spent a bulk of his own money to produce Megalopolis. Cronenberg made a movie about grappling with legacy and the death of his wife with The Shrouds. And now Spike Lee is giving us his view on what his career has amounted to, and where else it should go with Highest 2 Lowest.

Highest 2 Lowest stars Denzel Washington, who is giving an absolute Grade A Spike Lee impression. Anyone who’s seen interviews with Spike will recognize the mannerisms and line deliveries. Spike is smooth, he’s exciteable, he’s funny, and Denzel bundles all of these into his work here. Along with the performance we get some line deliveries that feel like Uncle Spike reaching through the camera, grabbing our heads, and speaking his personal truth to power straight to our face. While there’s some eye rolls to be had anytime someone insists they know the secrets of the world, much of what Spike is saying is less obnoxious than any of the messages we got from Coppola or Cronenberg.

Some of that probably comes from the fact that Spike Lee had to hustle twice as hard as either of those auteurs. He made his directorial debut with his sweltering day in a New York neighborhood film, Do The Right Thing. He was young, but he’d lived a life, so when he talks you feel an urgency to listen. As Denzel/Spike is monologuing you also get the idea that he’s reflecting on the possibility that he’s wrong. That the success that David King’s (Denzel Washington) experience has lead him somewhere he doesn’t want to be. David King is a record producer on the verge of selling his booming business, and he’s doing everything in his power to stop the sell. King is a record mogul, father, husband, lives in the hottest spot in Brooklyn, drives a Rivian. He’s got the best ears in the business, or so he says, and those ears have built him an empire. He walks across the Brooklyn Bridge regularly, while he’s rich he’s still among the people. Even when he’s barking at his kid to spend less time on his phone, David King feels like the epitome of cool.

While hustling to maintain control of his business his son is seemingly kidnapped for ransom by a disgruntled fan (A$AP Rocky). Only it turns out it wasn’t his son, it was the son of King’s friend and employee Paul Christopher (Jeffery Wright). This is the sequence that worked the least well. King is weighing whether to give up 17.5 million dollars the kidnappers are asking for, thus losing his company forever, or let his friend’s son be killed. The film presents this at one point, as a moral quandary. Then later answers the allegedly enigmatic issue with the only right answer, save your friend’s kid.

Here is when the film picks up. Running with an Inside Man esque heist sequence we see King get on a packed NYC subway to make the cash drop. As NYPD is getting into place to catch the kidnappers, King rattles towards his destination in a car packed to the gills with Mets fans. The frenetic scene only picks up in energy as the jazz score that’s underneath the entirety of the film picks up in rhythm. It’s a combination only Director Lee could have mixed up, and it makes the film sing. The entire score is a highlight, but these elements coming together are something that every heist director should be deeply jealous of.

As the film reaches its conclusion David King finds himself realizing that the way back to himself is by actually stepping away from work in a sense. By building community and focusing on the careers he wants to focus on he can work with his family, spend more time with them, and lift up voices that need his support. It feels like a tip of the cap in the direction we can expect Lee’s career to go from here as well. This is Spike’s first time working with A24, but the ending feels like a message that more indie pictures are to follow from 68 year old Spike Lee. His roots are after all, indie based, even if the studio system is where he’s been recently with works like Oldboy and BlacKKKlansman both being major studio projects.

I have admittedly not seen the Kurosawa film High and Low that Highest 2 Lowest is based off of. It doesn’t necessarily grapple with class, rather with the history of Spike Lee. And Lee’s work on the film feels deeply personal; from the score, to the New York setting, to the legacy that’s built by his character. It feels preachy in an interesting way as opposed to a boring or just plain ignorant one, unlike Megalopolis or The Shrouds. And of course, Denzel is enough of a boon to make any script absolutely soar.

4.5/5