Directed by Spike Lee | Screenplay by Alan Fox, based on Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low, written by Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Eijirô Hisaita, and the book King’s Ransom by Evan Hunter | 133 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | Apple TV+
At the heart of this picture is a conundrum that Spike Lee and Alan Fox, his screenwriter, have pared off the Akira Kurosawa original — the choice of what’s right versus all the money in the world. It’s the same intent Kurosawa was after, and while this movie is looser and shaggier than the Japanese classic, there’s a lot to recommend the way the new movie does it. It’s taken me a few weeks to get to it due to the film festivals, but happy to have found time for it.
Denzel Washington is David King, a veteran music mogul who lives in Brooklyn Heights in an apartment overlooking Lower Manhattan and the Bridge. He wants to leverage his fortune to buy back a record label he founded, one he regrets having sold years before, and give him another chance at relevance. The same day the deal is set up, King’s teenage son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped from his basketball camp to the horror of King, his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), and his good friend and driver, Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright). The cops get involved and the word gets out to the media, except it’s then revealed the kidnappers grabbed the wrong kid — they nabbed Paul’s son, Kyle (Elijah Wright).
The question then becomes, will David pay the ransom — $17.5 million dollars — for the son of his friend? He was willing to do it for his own son, but a lot less inclined when it isn’t blood. There’s also the question of his deal, but it quickly becomes clear that the weight of public opinion — and the power of social media — might be the thing that forces David to do the right thing, while coming to grips with the idea that people’s attention is the only currency now. David and Paul have an expression that suits: “I overstand.”
The picture is bisected — there’s the first half full of stress and decision-making around the abduction — and then there’s the second half, which is a full-on wet kiss to New York City, bringing in colour, Cuban music, the Joker steps up in the Bronx, obsessive Yankee fans on the subway, and fourth-wall-breaking good times. The subtext of meta humour starts to bubble into text as we go along, including apartment A24 — the studio partnering with Apple to get this thing made.
It’s not all fun and games. The score by Howard Drossin is weirdly applied — sometimes heavy handed, as in the first half-hour, and then in the third act, where we’ve got a chase sequence in a subway station, the music sounds like it comes from Riverdance. Still, the needle drops are terrific, and the whole thing could’ve been scored with hip hop. The picture also has a few editing issues, the feeling of missing interstitial scenes, especially evident in the first act, and there’s a lot more to be said — that this movie ignores — about the music industry eating itself since the arrival of streaming, with fewer musicians able to make a living.
But it’s got Denzel, as magnetic as he always is, Jeffrey Wright offering terrific support, and a late appearance by A$AP Rocky also welcome. If the movie had just been David and Jeffrey driving around the Bronx listening to James Brown, I would’ve watched and loved that, but there’s a playfulness in all of this that’s easy to appreciate, and Lee’s scrappy spirit as a filmmaker is becoming something of a badge of honour.
