Lee's Lowest

Thierry Frémaux, chief director of the Cannes Film Festival, declined to include Spike Lee’s latest, Highest 2 Lowest, in the Official Competition. “I wanted to be cautious,” he said, “but I can tell you now: Spike Lee’s film Highest 2 Lowest will be screened [out of competition] in the presence of Denzel Washington, who will be making his first time ever on Cannes’ red carpet.”

Lee made no secret of his annoyance with the festival dragging its feet, preempting Fremaux’s announcement and perhaps forcing his hand with an Instagram post that confirmed the movie would play at Cannes; unlike in 1989, when Wim Wenders successfully campaigned against Do the Right Thing receiving the Palme d’Or, there was no controversy this year, not even a line from Lee like “Somehow, I always lose when someone’s driving a car.”

Highest 2 Lowest, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film, was released in 300 theaters last Friday; somehow, three of them are in Baltimore. Despite some controversy regarding the film’s limited release, Lee and Washington aren’t complaining, at least publicly. Washington: “That’s the nature of the business now—they also gave us a lot of money to make the film. The industry has changed. Time has changed. So we’ve got to change with the times.” Lee: "This film would not have been made without Apple. That’s just the truth. We’d done this four times already, and the last time was a great box office success. Not to say that all success is built upon box office, but—” Washington, echoing a sentiment his character first opposes and then embraces in the film: “But it is called show business. No business, no show. No business, no next show.”

Unfortunately, Highest 2 Lowest barely clears Chi-Raq: this is the most disappointing movie of the year, a sharp drop-off from Da 5 Bloods and 2018’s BlacKKKlansman. Kurosawa’s film sets a very high bar, but both are based on an Ed McBain paperback—you’re not beginning from a piece of great literature. It shouldn’t be impossible to adapt or update; the premise hasn’t aged a day, and McBain’s King’s Ransom is set in New York—how can you miss?

Despite boasting Matthew Libatique, one of the best cinematographers working today, Highest 2 Lowest is a remarkably ugly movie, an exemplar of everything that’s wrong with digital cinematography and modern “moviemaking,” if you can call it that. The lens is WIDE OPEN, everything is sharp and sterile, and it makes everyone and everything look embalmed, clearer than clear, realer than real; you see the set, you see the makeup, and you have a much harder time suspending disbelief. One doesn’t need a degree in film studies nor any practical experience on a film set to judge whether or not a movie is working; the audience receives all of this without knowing it, and when the craft is slack, they tune out. There was a decent crowd on Friday, and they started checking their phones a third of the way through; they didn’t run, they ambled to the bathroom.

Washington stars as David King, a rapper who ruled the 1990s and early-2000s and eventually became a prominent record executive; one day, his NBA-bound son is kidnapped, but he’s quickly found and returned. Turns out the criminals got the wrong kid: the son of Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), Washington’s confidante, an employee first, a friend second; when the kidnappers insist they pay the $17.5 million ransom anyway, Washington and his wife (Ilfenesh Hadera) hem and haw for considerably longer than the characters in Kurosawa’s film. Washington asks her what everyone would think if they declined to pay the ransom, and Hadera says that, “The people in our life will understand our decision” (a woman in the theater gasped “WHAT!” at this line).

Once they finally decide to pay the guy, the movie does pick up, but it’s too little too late for a film so slack and visually incoherent. There are many long conversations in rooms with two, maybe three people, and Lee cuts CONSTANTLY from every conceivable angle, an editing strategy that only sort of works when he pushes it over the edge near the end; on the whole, the editing is what ruins Highest 2 Lowest, because it prevents any tension from accumulating. I’m surprised King’s Ransom hasn’t been adapted more: the early twist that the rich guy’s son is safe throws the audience off and instantly reorients the story. Kurosawa’s film is a masterclass in blocking and staging, and while Highest 2 Lowest repeats its beats, the movie never has an audience to lose because it wastes so much time at the beginning.

It’s not that Washington, Wright, Hadera, or A$AP Rocky (the kidnapper) are particularly bad—all the performances are fine, and Alan Fox’s screenplay is on par with most of Lee’s second- or third-tier work. But from minute one, something feels off: for whatever reason, Libatique shoots the movie like a telenovela, or the earliest digital Hollywood films (Scary Movie 4, Superbad, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead); perhaps a closer, and more contemporary, analogy are sports broadcasts. Everything’s too bright, too defined, lacking in life; as soon as Washington and the NYPD go down into the subway to make the drop, the movie suddenly and noticeably shifts from digital to Super 16mm, another major choice made with no apparent purpose, let alone grace. Take a wild guess: when you’re up in the skyscraper with a superstar, everything’s “clean,” and when you go into the streets, you get “grimy.” Lee pulls it off with all of the alacrity of a film school student; his most consistent failure as a director is his inability to move beyond the didacticism and stuffiness of the kind of “classical” filmmaking taught at schools like NYU, his home for four decades now.

None of that’s surprising—look at the ending of 2004’s She Hate Me, where Lee tries to weave polyamory and securities fraud after 140 minutes (!!!) of limp sex comedy. But he’s never been a bad filmmaker: as much as the classical craft keeps him from reaching a higher place, it’s kept him at a fairly high level for many years now. I couldn’t believe he chopped up his famous floating dolly shot with more ADD cutting: John Douglas Thompson starts off gliding for half a second, and then Lee cuts to coverage of Washington for another half second, then back to Thompson, still gliding. It’s the best example of the film’s baffling ineptitude, a failure in film grammar that the entire audience receives and, in turn, tunes out.

I could understand the movie’s chintzy look if Lee had a limited budget, but this is an Apple Originals production. The budget hasn’t been publicized, and while it obviously wasn’t anywhere near F1’s obscene $300 million, Lee had the money to properly light his set, and he knows his lenses and camera bodies and film stocks. Why does Highest 2 Lowest feel like the work of an amateur, or a former master losing his marbles? Lee’s neither, but he doesn’t acquit himself here; nevertheless, I hope the movie does as well as it can in 300 theaters. Lee will certainly make another movie—he’s only 68—but now, I can only hope it won’t be a totally incoherent bore.

—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits