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‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Review: Spike Lee’s Kurosawa-Inspired Kidnapping Drama Isn’t So Much a Remake as a Manifesto
Denzel Washington plays a music mogul who faces a series of big moral choices in a film whose sensational third act justifies remaking Akira Kurosawa.
And then comes a scene for which there is no equivalent in Kurosawa’s version — a face-off between Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky as the man with the nerve to ransom his son — and the movie rockets into a sublime new stratosphere, delivering an electrifying last act that’s at once original and deeply personal. There’s Stackin’ Hits, of course, but even more important is his family: wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and teenage son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), whose ear for fresh talent just might carry the label through the turbulent challenges the industry is facing. Meanwhile, King’s home is a temple to Black excellence, art-directed like a Pedro Almodóvar movie (its colored walls adorned with paintings and artifacts from Lee’s personal collection), in a way that collapses the distance between the filmmaker and his fictional protagonist.
Or read this on Variety
