REVISÃO DE FILME DE ‘MAIS ALTA MAIS BAIXA’: Denzel Washington coroa o remix bagunçado de Kurosawa, de Lee, Lee

Spike Lee’s latest Cannes joint was hand-wound with the air of a remix album, shamelessly borrowing the bones of a classic, playing with the beats, and adding a few unexpected twists until the old feels like something new, if not always. The source, of course, is Akira Kurosawa’s dark 1963 classic, High and Low, itself drawn from Ed McBain’s novel Ransom of the King . In Lee’s hands, that postwar parable of class and capital becomes a New York hip-hop fable, starring Denzel Washington as David King, a tycoon with “the best ears in the business,” who discovers that wealth, reputation, and even Basques can’t protect him from the moral sand of a grumpy renown.

The setup still resonates: the chauffeur’s boy (not the tycoon’s heir) is kidnapped, a ransom is demanded, and the tycoon must decide whether to sacrifice his fortune for someone else’s child. Kurosawa staged this as a piece of corroded morality; but here, Lee favors forward momentum, quick cuts, and cacophony. The Yokohama apartment was traded for a Dumbo penthouse with skyline views and a wall-to-wall gallery of Black excellence, featuring Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and more. Part of the film’s design was to place David at the crossroads of Black Cultural Achievement and Capitalist Overreaction, to make him an avatar of pride and insecurity in equal measure.

Washington is too old for the role, and that’s precisely why he’s perfect. He wears his Yankees cap like a crown, cuts through the dialogue with boxer-clad figures, and shifts from silky charm to terrifying gravitas in the space of a phone call. Watching him switch between his Sacchrine Workroom diction and the inflections on the streets he navigates when negotiating with the kidnapper is a small study in code-switching. Jeffrey Wright as Paul, the driver and childhood friend whose son was kidnapped, provides the self-awareness the tycoon can’t find within himself. Their exchanges feel like decades of friendship resisting collapse under the weight of grave personal expenses.

Now pushing seventy, the seasoned auteur, after Do the Right Thing and She’s Gotta Have It, still films New York as if it were simultaneously a crucible and a carnival. The rescue transfer unfolds on the No. 4 train packed with Yankees fans, in a delirious setting juxtaposed with mopeds tearing through the Puerto Rican Day parade, with Latin music icon Eddie Palmieri on screen. He’s less assured in the film’s quieter stretches, where Kurosawa’s agonizing stillness gives way to a nervous, almost impatient pace. Yet the sheer heat of the city seems to fuel the film forward.

The wildest bet was $AP Rocky as Yung Felon, the aspiring rapper turned Kidnapper. His performance leans toward a kind of dark magnetism that’s half-bored and half-desperate, as if he knew he was playing a verse he’d scribbled. The confrontation between him and Washington culminates in what can only be described as a rap battle with weapons drawn. The audacity of the choice teeters on parody, but somehow finds a raw, jagged sincerity. Lee has always thrived on these tonal chords, and here, he nearly loses his footing, but the risk itself feels vital.

A ‘highest 2 lowest’ property | Photo Credit: Apple TV

 

Not all of this works. Howard DroSsin’s swelling score calls for subtlety (Lee’s longtime collaborator Blanchard is sorely missed). Spice Ice and Princess Nokia flit in and out like Easter eggs. The film’s memes-as-chorus feel like a weak substitute for the media paranoia that fueled Kurosawa’s original. And the ending—with Washington, his family intact, discovering a new star in his living room—hint toward a brilliant uplift that gets uncomfortable.

But Lee isn’t chasing fidelity. He’s remixing. The title itself nods to Kurosawa’s mountain imagery and Lumanism, and to hip-hop’s cadences of rise and fall. The film may not mine the existential despair of its predecessor, but it revels in its own invention, bending hip-hop culture, Black art, and the filmmaker’s unexpected love affair with New York.

Higher 2 Lower is uneven, excessive, occasionally ridiculous, but never dull. It is also, against the odds, a delightful reminder that Lee and Washington, nearly two decades after Inside Man, can still soar on screen. If Kurosawa asked whether money can be separated from morality, Lee asks something more American: can money, music, and myth be disclosed in redemption? His answer, for better or worse, is a hell yes.

The Loudest Lowest is available to stream on Apple TV

Published – September 5, 2025 3:21 PM IST