Denzel Washington as a complacent label boss and success man, which is suddenly under pressure morally.
Photo: Apple TV Plus/David Lee
The radiant morning, on the music producer David King (Denzel Washington) on the terrace of his sophisticated Brooklyner Penthouses with a view of the Manhattan Skyline, couldn’t be better. He has just decided not to sell the music catalog of his legendary Label Stackin Hits to an investor. “They make advertising music for tampons and viagra. They press out every drop of black culture and artistic integrity, «he says to his partner, who absolutely wants to sell. King wants to continue, produce music and promote young artists. To do this, however, he needs capital to pay his companies who want to give up the business.
A short time later, his youthful son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands $ 17.5 million. King’s money would be gone and he threatens to drift into ruin business. Spike Lee’s new film “Highest 2 Lowest” is based on Akira Kurosawa’s crime arithmetic “between heaven and hell” (1963). The plot is similarly knitted, although the 68-year-old Spike Lee does not want his film to be understood as a remake, but as a new interpretation of the material. As in the original, it is not really the entrepreneur’s son who is kidnapped, but because of a confusion of his closest friend, Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of the chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright).
In this respect, the exploitation logic of the cultural industry, including the media hype, is the actual topic of this film.
Should King pay the ransom anyway? Even if it is not his son that the kidnapper has in force? He discusses this with his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), son Kyle and the police. It is soon clear that the banks have everything away when he pays. From the luxury apartment to his art collection (UA with basquiat, Kehinde Wiley and Henry Taylor) to the catalog with the black music, which he produced for decades. The name stackin hits is no coincidence with the Stax label, but also the songs and compositions of Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin and other legends of black music are part of David King’s empire.
Denzel Washington knows how to play it as a delicate success of success, who is suddenly under pressure morally. In the end, of course, King pays, not least because the chauffeur, whose son was kidnapped, is his narrow childhood friend. Both come from precarious conditions in the Bronx. While King made a career, Christopher landed in jail. He has served his prison sentence, but he is still suspicious for the police welding around King’s apartment.
Finally, a handover of money is planned in the subway that drives Brooklyn baseball fans into the Bronx. The handover ends in a street festival of the Puertorican Community in northern Manhattan, in which the music legend Eddie Palmieri, who died at the beginning of August at the age of 88, can be seen on stage, who grinning his piano broadly.
The kidnapped is freed, King threatens bankruptcy while the media celebrate him as a hero. His label makes more sales, but lawyers and investors sit on his neck. He has two weeks to get the ransom. While the police cripped helplessly in the dark and continues to suspect the chauffeur, it is finally the music expert from King that leads to the solution. He recognizes the voice of the kidnapper, with whom he has made several calls, on a demo tape that was left behind.
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It must be the rapper Yung Felony (a $ ap rocky) that King and Christopher track down in the Bronx in their old “Hood” to get the ransom. In the studio, where the rapper is taking pictures, King is opposed to him on the desk with gun in his hand and negotiates until there is an inevitable change of shot and a chase.
“Highest 2 Lowest” is a capitalist fairy tale about a black entrepreneur who is reminiscent of his real principles by confronting the kidnapper, which is almost staged as a rap battle. Does King still get something from life on the street whose sounds he sets in value? Sometimes this seems very fake, not least because the film is underlaid with plenty of pathetic music.
Yung Felony, it turns out, is a big King fan and frustrated artist, who becomes famous for this story and ends up in jail as a rapping celebrity. In this respect, the recycling logic of the cultural industry, including the media hype, is acted by this film, which has been dispensed with in blatant class contrasts, as can be seen at Kurosawa. Instead, Spike Lee transfers the conflict about social hierarchies into a story about appropriation and in value in black music culture. Unfortunately, this is very pleasing in the final happy end resolution. Spike Lee staged a black New York beyond common clichés with an enormous star contingent, among other things, even basketball legend Rick Fox can be seen in a secondary role.
Available on Apple TV+
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