Highest 2 Lowest

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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The New York auteur Spike Lee scores a triumphant return to the thriller genre with “Highest 2 Lowest.” The film is immersive, colorful, and engaging, rich in symbolism, emotion, and high drama. As a brisk and compelling crime drama, at first glance it is quite conventional, yet it has a weight of symbolism and is rife with Manichaean pushes and pulls, struggles of Ego and the battle of good versus evil and the forces of power and control.

David King (Denzel Washington) is a high-powered music executive perhaps modeled after the great Clarence Avant known as “The Black Godfather.” King lives in a glamorous penthouse high above New York with paintings by Basquiat and Warhol prints of Muhammad Ali hanging floor to ceiling. His stunning wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) is feline and remote. His opinionated cyberspace-driven son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is plugged in and hyper-aware.

David is in a slump, feeling somewhat enervated by the wear of time and the alienation of Trey. He is losing his edge. Suddenly he has the Idea to resume his original position as CEO of his music company.

The next day, David receives a very upsetting phone call to say the least: Trey has been kidnapped after basketball practice, with a ransom. David is stupefied and tells his wife that he will comply with the demands. Shortly after Trey is returned. However, Trey’s best friend Kyle (Elijah Wright) is kidnapped in Trey’s place. The Kings are tormented because Kyle’s father is King’s right hand man Paul (Jeffrey Wright,) a friend going back decades. The ransom demand is seventeen million dollars.

King stubbornly refuses to pay on for self-righteous reasons. He is David King music Mogul extraordinaire. No one has the right to extort money from him. In addition to these principles, if he does pay King‘s dream of resuming control of his company would vanish.

With percussive intensity, David becomes alienated by Kyle, and Paul and agrees to consent to the ransom. The police adamantly assert that they will get the money back along with Kyle alive and well.

The tension quickly intensifies with a parade scene during a chase worthy of Hitchcock and a hair-raising fight on a subway.

Eerily, King oscillates between being a genuine father and a selfish authoritarian.

As the dejected prince and kidnapper Yung Felon who has nothing, A$AP Rocky is excellent and just about steals the film. He is the villain by no real fault of his own, with a huge chip on his shoulder. He was left out in life, and he is seething with envy, but all the same, things are not his fault. Felon was dealt the short end of the stick, and he is doing the best that he can.

Here a diamond encrusted crucifix and the New York Yankees stand for what is righteous, good, and mighty while David King’s pummeling of Yung Felon is a bit ”disturbing and excessive.” Might makes right. Divine justice restores Harmony but at what price?

Spike Lee explores theological conservatism here (Islam included) as well as Hitchcockian apprehension.

The pacing and emotional nerve jangling to be experienced is first rate.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com