In Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington feels very authentic as David King, a superstar music producer known as “the best ears in the business.” You get the impression the performance may reflect a showbiz type Washington has encountered more than once.
David is a reflexive gladhander, smiling and chuckling and bantering, yet with a show of underlying gravity, easygoing yet earnest. He’s a master of listening, or at least of looking like he’s listening.
As the movie starts, David is maneuvering to buy back the record label he founded before it’s taken over by a consortium that wants to make music with A.I. The early scenes have the feel of a glossy, glamorous show-business melodrama. But when David gets a call telling him his son has been kidnapped for ransom, the movie quietly downshifts into a thriller.
Then the story takes another, even more unsettling twist that puts it into the realm of a moral thriller (stop reading now if you don’t want to know it). The kidnapper, it turns out, has napped the wrong kid; not David’s son but the son of his beloved ex-con chauffeur and confidant Paul (Jeffrey Wright).
Just that quickly, David’s sense of urgency to pay the multi-million-dollar ransom, with money otherwise slated for his business deal, simply evaporates. Eventually, David starts to grasp that not only is Paul’s son’s life at stake, so is his own soul.
You may recognize the basic plot of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963), of which this is a heavily embellished but unmistakable remake, with Washington in the Toshiro Mifune role. Time has shown that Lee attempting his own take on Kurosawa is not hubris; he’s a master too.
Working from a script by Alex Fox, Lee keeps us on the edge of our seat even while he takes the time to explore character, and to use the New York locations for all they’re worth. His approach is charged yet discursive, and the movie glides and swerves and rattles along like a subway ride, unpredictably but never incoherently, to a satisfying destination.
I well remember when Lee first showed up in American movies in the late ’80s, and how brashly innovative his techniques seemed. He moved cinema forward. But here, as in his intriguing 2006 bank heist thriller Inside Man, his style seems old-school, loose, adaptable, almost classical.
Of course, none of this stylistic prowess would amount to much if Lee wasn’t hugely abetted by Washington, Wright and the rest of the cast, including Ilfenesh Hadera as David’s wife, Aubrey Joseph as his son, ASAP Rocky as a mysterious young rapper and John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters and LaChanze as the cops. Also, Highest 2 Lowest is full of great songs and a driving, at times almost Riverdance-ish score by Howard Drossin. It’s maybe the best soundtrack of the year, or possibly a close second to that of Sinners.
***
For some reason, the 2016 Japanese monster spectacular Shin Godzilla is receiving a wide release in the multiplexes. Like 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, it’s a free-standing entry, unconnected to the other films in The Big G’s franchise. Also like Godzilla Minus One, it’s marvelous, and worth taking the trouble to see on a big screen.
It’s a very different film than the ruminative, chastened period piece G-1, however. Shin Godzilla is contemporary and feverishly paced, with a satirical edge. Apparently taking inspiration from the Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, directors Hideaki Anno (who wrote the script) and Shinji Higuchi focus on what it would be like if something like this really happened; the political and bureaucratic minutiae of the response to a gigantic creature rising from Tokyo Bay and wreaking mayhem in the city.
In rapid-cut sequences, plastered with ironically detailed subtitles, we see the prime minister and his civil and military advisors weighing options and glumly wishing the problem would go away. At least as much of the film unfolds in offices or conference rooms, or in corridors with long West Wing-style “walk-and-talks,” as in the rampaging monster’s wake.
Eventually the burden of stopping the titan falls to Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa), leading a team of “lone wolves, nerds, misfits” from different government departments who drop decorum and speak candidly with each other. There’s also a lovely and cheeky American envoy (Satomi Ishihara) trying to help before the U.S. decides to hit Godzilla (and Japan) with another nuke.
The special effects sequences here, though sparing, are superb. When we first see the title character, he’s crawling on all fours and has a slack jaw and buggy fish eyes. As the movie progresses, he gradually evolves into a dark, radioactively glowing, thuggish-looking version of the familiar icon. He’s less endearing than previous versions, but I couldn’t help it, when his attackers start getting to him toward the end, I still couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the poor guy.
Also, Shin Godzilla employs passages from Akira Ifukube’s unforgettable score for the original 1954 Gojira. In Japan, that music must be as familiar as the Jaws or Rocky themes.
***
In the middle of the night, a bunch of little kids in a prosperous-looking middle class Pennsylvania suburb get out of bed and leave their homes, running through the streets with their arms out to their sides like wings. It turns out they’re all from the same third-grade class. Only one kid shows up at school the next morning. Not surprisingly, their young teacher (Julia Garner) falls under suspicion from their panicked parents; before long somebody has painted the word “WITCH” on the side of her car.
That’s the set up for the horror tale Weapons from writer-director Zach Cregger, and it’s undeniably a strong hook. It’s so strong, indeed, that as the movie progressed, I found myself thinking “this better be good.” I was prepared to be furious if the compelling premise dribbled away into ambiguity, offering no clear explanation of the mystery.
I’m glad to say that this doesn’t happen. The secret at the heart of the story, told Tarantino-style in lengthy chapters from the point of view of various characters – the teacher, a devastated father (Josh Brolin), the principal (Benedict Wong), a cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a petty criminal (Austin Abrams), the remaining kid (Cary Christopher) – is finally revealed. It’s a conventional horror movie explanation, I suppose, but at least it’s coherent, and it leads to a potent, gruesomely funny climactic payoff.
Cregger’s characters are particularly sympathetic because none of them are paragons; Garner shines as the teach, who drinks too much and is empathetic to her students to a degree that her mealy-mouthed principal thinks is unprofessional. Brolin gives a convincing portrait of the kind of parent whose fear makes him highly vocal. But the most memorable performance is by Amy Madigan, who doesn’t show up until about midpoint, then easily steals the movie with a hilarious yet spellbinding turn.
