Highest 2 Lowest (2025)
A Disappointing Departure From Kurosawa's Masterpiece
In Spike Lee’s fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington, Highest 2 Lowest, A$AP Rocky delivers a memorable performance in a forgettable movie. In this episode, Benji and Luke are joined by friend and scholar Inga Laurent to describe why Highest 2 Lowest is a disappointing “reimagining” of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece, High and Low, despite a promising premise and a few great performances.
We dive into many of the contentious creative choices, including the loudly mixed musical score, product placement, and insurance company mascots. We also explore: Why High and Low has more to say about 2025 than Highest 2 Lowest The prominence of improv from Denzel Washington and the incredible performances from A$AP Rocky and Princess Nokia A snapshot of High and Low and a full breakdown of one astonishing scene in particular Spoiler
Warning: This discussion contains spoilers for both Highest 2 Lowest as well as High and Low.
Join us as we go into detail about why we’d recommend skipping Highest 2 Lowest and just watching High and Low instead.
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Highest 2 Lowest (2025) — Episode Transcript
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington team up for a modern retelling of a film by legendary Akira Kurosawa. But Lee's reimagining takes Kurosawa's striving shoe executive and makes him a complacent music mogul whose best work is 20 years in the past. This is a podcast about moments, and this is a movie where, at least in our screening, the best moments came after the projector shut off and the crowd started talking. The movie is called Highest 2 Lowest. This podcast is called All Those Moments. I'm Benji Wade. And I'm Luke Baumgarten.
done.
Time.
All those moments is a podcast built around connecting social, political, or cultural moments with moments from our favorite movies and television shows. And Luke, we have a third chair. We have our first co-host. I guess what we're calling. Let's call him co-host. It's Inga Laurent. Welcome to the show. Inga. Thanks for being here, Inga. Inga, did I say your name right? Yeah. Laurent or Laurent? What do you do? I say Laurent. Okay. You sh and I will say Laurent. Inga.
Is a Fulbright scholar who writes on restorative, transitional, transformative justice. And she's also the reason, and Luke has brought this up a couple times, Inga, that Luke has returned to watching movies and movie theaters and enjoying talking about them with you. It really at a time when, like I think I've said on every episode so far, I was sort of like locked in and like not doing much, not because I was worried about, you know, personal safety or anything. I was just kind of in a rut. You helped get me out of it.
That's really sweet. So why you're you know, you're an academic. Why why do you love movies as much as you do? Why was it you dragging me to the theater and not the other way around? there's something magical about darkness. I agree. And you could just suspend so many of your sort of other senses while you're really just hyper focused on one thing at one time. And we don't have, I think, a lot of places in society where we get to hyper focus on one thing.
But it's also a communal experience. So you're with your people. And then to be able to talk to your people about what you experienced is like it's just unparalleled. Which is the by the way, the real quick, the theme of this podcast, and we have brought and it's been kind of I think a successful differentiator is to talk to the audience. So far, I'm so stoked that we're doing that. And you had a huge part to do with that for the screening of Highest 2 Lowest. Our
idea to invite Inga on this podcast was before the movie Highest 2 Lowest was coming to the Magic Lantern. We just Luke and I really want to get that out there that we're not tokenizing our friend Inga to come rescue our whiteness from bad takes about a spike Lee movie.
Let's just get that out of the way. Can we just say it's one and one A? Like we were gonna have Inga on anyways. It just so happened she gets to rescue us from our takes about whiteness. Well and you and Luke, you mentioned to me, because I'm gonna let you cook on why we decided to do Highest 2 Lowest. But before we do that, I just wanna say, Inga, this is something I didn't know until like two days ago that you have a New York connection. I definitely can you talk about your early life a according to Luke, ages possibly zero to eleven. Yes. Let's go.
I was born in Brooklyn. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. You know, there's pizza shop around the corner. I went to Catholic school. What neighborhood in Brooklyn do you remember? So it's by Marine Park. Yeah. Which not a ton of people know. Yeah. Yeah. Marine Park. Yeah. It's probably closest large neighborhood is like Prospect Park. But I lived off Flatbush. Okay, Flatbush. Okay. Yeah. Luke said you're you come from a Haitian background? I'm Haitian, German, and Czechoslovakian.
When you were watching Highest 2 Lowest, yeah. Did you recognize any of the things in there that you were just kinda like early childhood, some stuff that some some Yeah. No, it did not feel very New York to me. Yeah. Or at least my experience of New York. Okay. Mm-hmm. Let's get back to the podcast. Okay. Let's cover our bases. So far we have speaking of covering, we've covered the death of baseball with Ephis. Yes. We've covered the death of civil discourse and perhaps all of society with Eddington. We covered the death of Jeff Buckley and now.
Luke, I think you've already told us why you wanted to do Highest 2 Lowest for this latest episode, but it is interesting to me that there was a there still was a continuation of the themes we talk about all the time. And certainly the discourse around Spike Lee and Denzel Washington has continued this idea of like cultural decay, nostalgia, the oncoming threat of AI and people being addicted to cell phones. I mean, in the first three minutes of the movie that comes up. So Yeah, totally. Luke, Inga, Inga, you go first.
What were your like give me two sentence impression about this movie? And I know we're gonna go into like therapy together through this podcast to talk about our feelings about this movie, but like before we talk about it together, and maybe your all of our impressions will change a little bit and mutate over the course of the next hour or so. What were your impressions of the movie? They were mixed. And there was some there was a lot of confusion for me. But there were moments of wholesomeness.
And moments that I just was like, that was like such a beautiful film. There was so much portrayal of black art and music and togetherness and family. And so I really like that. Yeah. yeah. And then confusion, because there were parts that inside internally that were like, that really needed to be addressed. And I didn't feel like it was. And it seems like it was doing a lot of different things and maybe not complete. No. For all of it. I mean, for me, yeah, basically the same.
You start thinking about some of the characters that get a little short shrift, like the kidnapper, the Jeffrey Wright character who is basically Denzel Washington's body man. and you're like, wow, there was just so much more here that could have been done for you know, it's like the black excellence is only for the black wealthy. and is that Spike Lee's point? To use the word Inga used of confusing. It's probably the least confident I've been.
In terms of where I'm at with what I think the film is attempting to do versus what I think it did. There were like a couple really, really strong moments in this movie and a couple great scenes, but like a couple great scenes does not a great movie make. And so I ultimately I think so too. I don't think it was a good movie. Also, though, I think this is kind of a validation of the idea. It's like I can go to bad movies and still have a good time if I get to talk to people afterwards, which again shout out Ingo. This audience was awesome.
Because of everybody was so filled with energy. Cacafinous. my God. So let's do a little bit of a plot, Luke. Yeah. And do you want to do the spoiler a little announcement? Yes, thank you. Right up top. We are going to spoil every single aspect of this movie a little bit high and low after we talk about Highest 2 Lowest, but just turn this thing off now if you don't want to hear. I mean, we're gonna go through the plot and you're just gonna have it all ruined for you. Hey, it's Benji. Thanks for checking out the show.
When we recorded this conversation, it was our intention to cover Highest 2 Lowest in its entirety first, before talking about Akira Kurosawa's nineteen sixty-three film, High and Low, but we couldn't avoid comparisons along the way because we had watched both films within the same week. But that means we didn't properly introduce High and Low, so I'm going to do that now. Like Highest 2 Lowest, Kurosawa's film is an adaptation of an Ed McBain novel called King's Ransom. Each movie shares its plot mechanics and its thematic DNA with the novel, but Spike Lee refers to Highest 2 Lowest as a reimagining of Kurosawa.
More than a newer adaptation of King's Ransom. In Highest 2 Lowest, the protagonist played by Denzel Washington is called David King. In Kurosawa's film, the protagonist played by Toshiro Mifune is called Kingo Gondo. All right, so as the movie opens, David King, record executive played by Denzel Washington, kind of passed his prime. He had all of his hits in the aughts. They talk about how he has the the man with the golden ears, he's, you know, and was the hitmaker of 2004, which means
He was probably there with Lance Bass doing in sync. You know, like this is the era. Like this is the guy who we think Did you think that's I mean, it's like Destiny's Child, it's like in sync. What just happened? I don't know. I'm about to black out. Lance Bass. I'm just saying, like
His is a yeah, like maybe he got young Usher, like he's the guy who discovered Usher. Something like that. There we go. Now we are on the train is on the train. Well, I was just thinking like it's like 2004. What are we even talking about here? It's boy bands, it's early hip-hop, whatever. All right. So, but the the film actually opens with like this really amazing series of drones drone shots of like Spike doing what Spike does best, just like real, like New York Tourism Bureau showing.
The lower east side of Manhattan, Dumbo, which is kind of the you know, the the closest part of Brooklyn to Manhattan, the little bit of the financial district, just gorgeous. It's like Dumbo's a neighborhood? Yeah, down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass. So that's like the first part of Brooklyn that really gentrified. Right. Which is like part of the story because so literally his he lives in a penthouse of this massive
actual building, basically looking down. We're gonna talk about the themes of like black wealth. His penthouse looks down on the financial district of New York, looks down on Wall Street. Like there's there's symbolism there. Looking down his nose. And that actually brings us to our first moment because Spike Lee paints New York like one of your French girls. It's beautiful.
But the montage is kind of wild, right? Spike Lee's movies, no matter what you want to say about them, they're always gonna have some type of element of speaking to the history of movies and the history of American culture, among other things. And I didn't even think about the Oklahoma angle, but let's play with that a little bit. what a beautiful morning, perf which was performed by Norm Lewis for this movie, who's a Broadway singer, also the first ever black performer cast in a Broadway production for the title role of Phantom of the Opera. Oklahoma is a musical that was set in nineteen six.
A story about state building manifest destiny shit. And you gotta think about Black Wall Street was built in 1906, the setting of the year of the Oklahoma musical, right? what a beautiful morning. what a beautiful day. I got a beautiful
Okay. Let me ask both of you something. Sure. When did you first remember noticing like what's up with the music? Was it early on in the first like twenty minutes? It was like immediately. Okay. So it was the the score was really high in the mix. So it was like the only thing it was like the shots of New York are beautiful. I really expected to be looking at like the Washington Monument because it really did feel like a presidential thriller from the nineties to me. Like it's Clint Eastwood, it's in the line of fire, you know. It's sweeping. It was epic. I was like, that
That doesn't quite fit with what I thought we were going to see. Right. And definitely didn't reflect my experience of New York. Right. Like once we actually get like we say, we Denzel, we hear his voice before we see him. We're but he's in the penthouse of this gorgeous, huge, I'm sure very expensive condo. He owns the top two floors of this building. He's a he's a big deal. but when we hear him talk, what we understand is King David.
David King, the man who created Stackin' Hits Records, which Denzel mumbles so many times. I was like, I don't know what the actual record label is. I need to look it up to make sure I'm gonna say it right. Sorry. Stacking hits records. With that apostrophe N, like stackin' I think so. Yeah, I think so. But he's he's ready to get out. So he's planning to retire. Or at least that's what we think. Because actually, this phone call that we're listening to is actually him saying, No, actually I want to, I wanna dive back in. He
Goes home and he does what? He tells his wife, I don't even know the character's name and I felt bad about that. I almost looked it up, but it also sort of symbolizes how little she's in the like how little she matters to the film. I don't even know her name of substance. The conversation that he's having with the wife actually I think was the most meaningful point of contact for them right as it happens right before because she's trying to get him in touch with who he is as a human. Yeah. She's like, ultimately, she's like, Well, yes, we can go back to this life.
If that's what makes you deeply and genuinely happy. Right. If that's what connects you to yourself and how you used to walk across the bridge and listen to music. So she again, the women are sidelined and the women are trying to like get to the heart of like what makes you you. You know, and that's a reason I think for the lack of, you know, the losses of morality in the movie, because the, you know, the women aren't
As there the men aren't letting what the women are experiencing and saying to them hit them. It's in that moment, I was like, I still don't know if he's doing this for basically ego and legacy, like kind of toxic legacy reasons, or if it's because he really wants to recapture that spark. There is one scene that does happen at the beginning of the movie that I kind of liked. Okay, give it give it to me. It was the one, again, speaking of the encroaching technology and like our kids being addicted to algorithms, right? It had a moment where he's like,
Can you put your phone down? There's no parent that watched this movie that didn't relate. So he's talking to his teenage son Trey in the car on the way to basketball practice before we're introduced to Rick Fox. Maybe we'll talk about Rick Fox later. and he's giving him a hard time by the screen time. And then he says something which I really liked. He says, You don't think that's a little excessive? Five hours. I gotta get more followers? In order to have followers, you gotta be leading. Where are you leading them to? I'm just asking, where are you leading? To the promised land. yeah? wow. You a preacher now?
You lead them to the promised land. What scriptures you give them? That was a good note. It was a good exchange. It was some good performance. It was some good writing. It felt a little lived in. It was a one rare moment among many that I was kind of like, what is going on here? Where I was like, I felt grounded for just a second and and there was some traction in the movie. But anyway, so wholesome. Also wholesome. So we're gonna wholesome is a recurring facts that come out that make you that are endearing in this movie. But then a couple seconds later.
He gets a call and this is one of these weird like moments that you might want to jump in on, Benji, of like, was this intentional? 'Cause it was so it was jarring. Denzel gets a call, he turns literally almost turns away from the camera, turns back and he's like, Our son's been kidnapped. Bam.
Somebody's got Trey. Well, I mean somebody's got somebody somebody's got Trey. They they they they they they they they I think they kidnapped it. A lot of people have criticized this and or been confused by it. Like why? Why why was that choice made? It's really I I don't think there's an answer. It just makes the it makes the plot very, very difficult to follow. Because it was it it made it like difficult to track what was happening from scene to scene because you're like, I'm not quite sure what just happened there. Yeah. So it was an odd, really odd choice. Yeah.
Just as comparison, again, I think it's gonna be impossible to not compare this to high and low at this point. The you spend forty-five minutes in the mansion of the setting of high and low, yeah, and you hear every meticulous detail of these conversations with the kidnapper, trying to extort the the protagonist.
And we're gonna talk more of so none of these characters really have anything to do because another way that this film departs from high and low is that like the second half of high and low basically is basically a police procedural. That's not the direction this movie goes in. So these cops end up being kind of useless, except to do a couple of things. They are really, really suspicious of Denzel Washington's chauffeur, who is played by Jeffrey Wright, one of my favorite actors, living and working today, an ex-con who
gets a second second life by finding the Nation of Islam in prison, potentially a really awesome character that is written very, very flatly, I think. It takes longer to figure this out in Highest 2 Lowest than it does in High and Low. It's not actually Denzel's kid. It's Jeffrey Wright's kid who's Denzel's godson. And then all of a sudden it becomes about 20 minutes of a morality play of like, I was totally ready to give you $17 million for my son.
But this other guy's son, I don't know. Yeah. What did you think about that? Because I and and we can compare it to high and low, but just on its own merits, it it it at least provides the structure for an interesting conversation about capitalism and about, you know, wealth and and and what we really value. I thought that's what the movie was. Like that's what the entire movie should have been about. Because there were many people in the theater, there were a lot of comments, there were a lot of grumblings, like, man, why would you do that? And I was sitting there thinking.
I'm not sure what choice I would make if I were in this situation. But I didn't really feel comfortable saying that because you're the restorative justice person. Also because like my higher self, my aspirational self, was like, of course we're gonna pay the money. But as they're putting it in this movie, it's the entire loss of his like everything, right? His job, his identity, his house, his because they had leveraged the home.
All this stuff. And that's what high and low, I think, does well also is show actually even in more detail how precarious of a position this will put the family, the entire family in. That should have been the crux of both movies, in fact. And I don't feel like either movie did that justice because I think we should have wrestled with that question a lot longer. Some of these questions that needed to be answered about what's actu actually happening here and the choices that were made by Spike Lee and
This script, who the Alan, what is his name that wrote the script? Alan Fox, I want to say. I think so. Yep. He confronts his son in Highest 2 Lowest. Yep. In a like kind of patriarchal, I'm the dad, and he like threatens to beat the shit out of his kid moment at the end. And you're just kind of like, what the hell just happened here? Whereas in high and low, the tension over the decision to pay the ransom is between the husband and wife. Yeah. And it plays out where the assistant to
Gondo in high and low sham about the way he's treating his wife. The wife's dowry funded the empire of Kingo Gondo. Yep. And so Reiko San, his wife, is like, I don't care. I do do not agree with this decision to not pay the ransom. Yep. And he's like, you know, you could not handle poverty, but he's not revealing. And it's his assistant, the his secretary, that points out to him, again, that character doesn't exist. Yep.
That moral conscience doesn't exist in the highest or lowest movie. And it makes it completely imbalanced. The assist the secretary character says she has a say in this. So he shames Gon Go san. Yeah.
That turns into Denzel Washington, the David King character going to his son Trey and basically threatening to kick his ass. I'm it's a four minute, I think and change wonder. Okay, first of all. Single shot meaning. It's yep. It's where the music is so obnoxious I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Cause it's just like nonstop. It doesn't give you a moment to feel anything that's being performed and all the kind of gravitational pull between these two actors. I don't know.
What he what what do you mean? You don't know? What what is there to know? You know every everything and everybody. Yeah, but right now I just No no daddy, you do know. Pay the fucking 17.5 million. This is just fucking money.
First of all, okay. The Kamala poster. There's a seventeen year old, like basketball obsessed son who the only piece of art you can really make out is a c is a com like Kamala for president poster. What did you think about that, Iga? In my heart of hearts.
I don't know. I don't even know. There's so many layers to that. I was like, I wanna believe that that would be in a seventeen year old boys and then I'm like, no, wait a minute, I don't and then I'm like, but wait, but what does that say about like sticking together as black folk? But but then there's that and her stance on that and
Get it twisted, son.
only one man in this house, and you looking at him.
You ever talk to me like that again? And I'll bust your little narrow, no-rent paying ass, you understand me?
I'm gonna say again. Do you hear me?
Huh? here you do you. Yeah, it's I think what made it so much more heartbreaking is the relationship that the opening scene that we get to see between the two, where there's this these moments of deep connection between the two and humor and lightness. And then that is turned on its head into a coercive control kind of situation. And so it just absolutely like obliterates the relationship. I'm not even sure it could ever go back to
How it was. you know, it's definitely a moment of departure for sure. It's moment of departure for sure. Maybe I'm biased because it's Denzel and I always want him to be on the winning side. But then again, training day, you know. So I don't know. But I found it interesting that the character was so likable. His character, David King, was really likable, but also kind of a jerk.
And just the complexity of humans, right? Like he was just deeply human and also like in a way that systems make you. Yeah. But you st I don't know. I don't know. I thought that was interesting. And then it sort of resolves on Denzel alone in his office, talking to himself. His office has all of this just mem memorabilia of black history, of pictures of Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye.
And there are two photos of himself, one as a young man in a Rolling Stone cover, and one as an older man on Time, the cover of Time magazine. He's has literally takes down one of those pictures and has a conversation with himself about what he should do. What would you do? He says, What would you do? He starts crying. We've talked about how patriarchy is bad for the women and the kids. This is obviously a way that.
Patriarchy diminishes men as well. It isolates them. He needs his family to like agree with him. He doesn't actually want to give them say, he doesn't actually want it to be like anything close to a democratic decision. So he's he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. And then he can't actually show that to anybody because he there's like a particular idea of masculinity in his head where it's like, I can't show weakness.
¡Girera!
Hasan? What I tell her.
What do tell them? Y'all talk to each other because I can't talk to them. So I'm gonna go talk to a picture of myself and cry. Yeah. What did you make of that scene? Well, there's a couple of things. One, it's yeah, it's in that moment that they needed to come together as a family and make a collective decision. So not one person has to carry the weight of a moral decision. and as as to the message that patriarchy hurts us all, yes, that exactly.
also, this is the moment where I actually become more invested in the character. Interesting. He starts to cry. In the beginning of this, Denzel is a smaller man. He starts to grow more into himself and into his morality at this moment. when he is having this like internal struggle with himself, and then the tide changes and he's made a different decision. I really wish we could have seen more.
In that moment. Exactly. Because I want to see that struggle. I want to see that internal fight. That's the internal fight I was having sitting there in the movie theater. Like, what would I do if this means destruction of my family line? Yeah. Right. and so it was such a missed opportunity for me. It was just, it was absolutely blank. Yeah, it's like it's a Shakespearean soliloquy moment. It really is. But there's two huge problems with it, folks. And I can see why Denzel was improving.
Right. He improved a lot of the stuff that was happening in the scene that we're describing, which you're putting a lot of weight on a performer to do that. The other problem, and this is a a a moment where my notes in the movie theater were being filled with references. This is a sort of kind of a trademark of Spike Lee. I mean, he doesn't say, What what do I do? What do I do? And talking to himself, he says, What do I do, Stevie Wonder? What do I do, James Brown? What do I do, Aretha Franklin? What do I do, Jimmy Hendrix? He literally name checks all those extremely famous people.
And then he ends up so as he's breaking down, asking these titans of music, one of whom died at like twenty seven. So it's like, What wisdom does sorry, Jimmy, but like what wisdom is Jimmy gonna have to give in this moment? It's actually at that point where the cop comes in, is Well, could you least pretend to give the money or say you're going to? 'Cause like we kind of need to keep this guy on the line here. and he still is kind of like, keep working on it. Like, what what do you mean working on it? Anyways, then the scene ends. But that does make sense though, in the high and low film.
Right. No, it totally makes sense. It makes sense in that you know, in the Japanese culture where we're talking about like the shame right of this. But it doesn't fit in the context today, I don't think at all. And so rather than sort of getting to the decision point which Denzel ultimately makes to pay the ransom, we just he wait we wait like the next morning comes, and he just has the money and he's ready to figure out where the kidnapper wants him to drop it. Then we're off to the races and it becomes basically a ransom heist
Mm chase movie. And so the kidnapper says, This is New York. Get on the train, my man. Like, just start going. I'll let you know when you need to get off. the train is full of Yankees fans. And again, like there's so much fan service in this movie. But I'm like, Spike, man, you're a Yankees fan. Is he he's a Yankees fan, right? Not a Mets fan. Yankees. Yeah. Yeah. This is not a flattering portrait of Yankees fans at all. Also it's like a film about it's like what you would.
Picture if you were doing a film about Yankees fans and not like real. Again, none of this felt real, just like the Puerto Rican Pride paper. It just didn't. And also just why and also just why. I I get it. Like he's having fun fucking with Boston Red Sox fans. Yeah. That's the reason he put that in the movie. But what does it have to do with the plot of Highest 2 Lowest? No. So a real quick no. I I I have to pick on some of the acting. The Wife Ilfenesh Hadera.
There are a couple moments where I could not understand how they ended up with this in the edit. She yells out, They found him. Do you guys remember Jeff? No, they I'm not trying to pick on the actress because I feel like this is it's the script, it's it's the direction, it's the what's happening in the scene, what is supposed to transpire. Yeah. Th another moment I'm gonna jump to, which is Jeffrey Wright. This is why I don't think it's the fault of Ilfenesh Hadera that her scenes were bad. There could have been so much here and there was
Almost nothing. And I don't think it's Jeffrey Wright's fault. Did what did you think of Jeffrey Wright in this ingo? Well, he just he was almost a non-character in the same way the wife was. and maybe that was and again trying to give credit here, was because of the way in high and low.
The character is portrayed, but then like the change of making him a friend. Yeah. Yeah. And the kid, the godson, like then he should have had much more of a role and it should have actually enhanced the morality question. Yep. or augmented the morality question rather than like it it seemed like the morality question got a lot less time in this. Actually, yeah, now that you mentioned that, let's go back again, back to that sort of earlier moments of the film where when Jeffrey Wright's driving him around, yeah.
And he's like asking him questions too about whether he should sell or not. And he Jeffrey Wright does say a couple of things that are, you know, that seemed at least to the but also like was like, You gotta do what you gotta do, King, basically. And he's like, I man, I respect you so much. I love you so much. Thank you for your counsel. Yeah. Like we set it up like he does actually respect this guy. But when it comes to the plot point of like whether or not he he basically treats him like he's a stranger, right? When it comes to whether or not I'm gonna give you 17 million dollars to save your kid. So that's where it was like, yeah.
doing too much trying to like smash too many characters together and it just doesn't work. It could have worked, I think with a better script, better writing, better direction, better choices by actors, better direction. But the idea should have worked because the reconstruction of the narrative around do I trust the Barney Fife cops of New York City? Right. So should we get back to the train scene, the hand the money handoff? Yeah.
He purposefully puts him on a train that's gonna be crowded with crazy Yankees fans to sort of throw him off. Like the only chance that this guy in 2025 is gonna have to get away with like a modern day ransom plot in a modern day surveillance state is some real like sleight of hand stuff. So that's what's I'm not saying any of this is executed well because it's actually executed very poorly. So bad. But that's the idea, right? Yeah. And hubris of people to believe like you can go into that scenario and that.
Right. You'll just be able to track the train or track this. It was insane. And so then the you know, then A$AP Rocky calls up, he's like, actually go, he's like, I don't want you to get off the station. go to the middle of the train and he's like, drop it when I tell you to drop it. And he drops also that that doesn't make sense either. Yeah. Before we get to the train and the drop off of the money thing, it's another I'm gonna get to a list of these later, probably, but there's a it's another weird product placement thing.
Put it in the Jordan bag. yeah, there's it's a Jordan bag. Why? Okay. Because in the movie High and Low, the thickness of the briefcase matters. It is so well constructed.
He does use one of his trademark floating Dolly shots before this scene. Sure. Detective Earl Bri Bridges is on the balcony at the penthouse describing what they're going to do to drop the money off with the kidnapper and get the kid back. Usually, when Spike Lee uses this technique, it's something confrontational. It's something to make the audience think. It's challenging. It has a lot of like purpose behind it.
I cannot for the life of me understand why he chose this moment. Safety is always job number one. The next priority is the money. Is showtime. Well, I guess he's explaining how the handoff is gonna go. It's like, why didn't you explain other more important parts of the movie better that we've already talked about? Like why does this the thing you chose to overexplain? And then because it is a really boring, it's like very
It's not interesting. It's not interesting. So he has to create this interesting shot to make it more interesting. And it is interesting in high low. Yeah. It's fascinating. my god. You are gripped. Yeah. So I feel like and maybe in homage to that, but then it misses the point in this in this film. So this is where the music, the Dave Grusin
from The Firm is what it made me think about, which I hated the movie The Firm, quite literally just because of the soundtrack. I don't like the movie, anyways. Yeah, but I can't stand the soundtrack. And I know Dave Dave Grusin's as famous jazz pianist, blah, blah, blah. Uh-uh. And this is where I was just like, I almost want to quit this movie. Because the music, to your point, Luke, nothing interesting's happening. We're gonna force you to believe that it's interesting because of the music. And it's just like overpowering.
There's the chaos on the train itself. And then as we get, you know, as they're approaching Yankee Stadium, it's also the the world famous, one of, you know, the Puerto Rican Day Parade. The point for the film is to then be like, there's chaos on the train that throws off the cops, and then there's chaos in the streets. We have to set up what actually happened. So Denzel drops the bag out of, or he kind of trips and drops the bag. You have to talk about the instructions are to go in between the trains, which if you have done is
Unbelievably difficult to keep your balance. Yes. And like, like he could drop it at a precise time. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And then he's not actually dropping it at a precise time. He actually gets jolted and just drops it. It just happens to drop right into the person's hand. Mess C. and so they're trying, there's a GPS tracker in this bag, and they're trying all state mayhem like me is trying, is the only cop tracking this bag, it seems like, for whatever reason. And this is what our friend Wes had to say. Doesn't it feel like
Hey, it didn't. Nobody is driving down the street that fast in New York City during a parade. Like I promise you the street would have been one block in New York City Puerto Ricans. Right. It would've been like eighteen blocks. There would have been people on bikes everywhere. Someone's grandpa would have had a horse. Like if we're doing a Puerto Rican parade in New York City, there would have been there'd have been empanadas and trucks everywhere, bro. Like it's gonna be the real thing. Like
I will say that I will I love Spike Lee. I felt like this was one of his sloppiest films. I feel like there was a lot of things. Hey, the score J makes sense. And like also, as much again, I Rosie Press, I love Eddie Palmer. I'm like down for this. Like, I got for the Tunos all throughout my family. I'm here for it. I was just like, I do not understand why this is in this film. It just felt like, again, like we were playing for laughs, but everyone's like, this is a super serious moment. When I see mayhem sprinting down the street, being like, I'm gonna.
Damn it, the GPS isn't working. I'm like, I don't I don't believe you. Like And I think maybe it was just him. He just took me out of the film so many times I was like
I mean that's like that's really just the refrain. I don't believe you. Let's just play it again. Can we just play it again? I don't believe you. Let me just do it. Let me go back just a little bit. I'm like, I don't I don't believe you. Like acting is believing. I don't believe you. I love Rosie Perez, but Rosie Perez just made me want to see do the right thing. That's all I was like, can we just watch a better movie? Because this sucks. I want off of this thing. And watching mayhem run through the streets, dropping stoop in one liner after one after the other.
I just was like, and then another another gag is like they finally catch up to the the bandits. There's like musical bandits and there's this whole thing that we do not need to get into, honestly. None of it matters because it's not fun, it's not interesting. Musical mopeds, musical bandits, and he finally gets the guy and he thinks he's got him and he's got the Jordan bag. Shout out Jordan. And then it's like filled with tampons and it's just like a big want want. And we don't actually ever see whether Zap Rocky or somebody else got away with the actual thing. No.
Cause I don't think Spike Lee thought that much ahead. He's like, I'm gonna do the Yankees thing, I'm gonna do the the Puerto Rican Day Parade thing. I'm not That's enough chaos. And he never was like, I wanna see where as a as a film goer, especially when I'm watching a thriller, I wanna know where the bag actually ended up. we don't even get that. There's like there's so many moments that like could have paid off even in a mediocre or a bad film they they don't even bother with. Can we get to the
The real key, the real meat of this movie, which has already been introduced, by the way. It's already on on the phone. A$AP Rocky was to the best thing about the movie. And he comes into it way too late to rescue it. But his voice had already done a lot. A$AP Rocky plays an aspiring rapper called Young Felon. And we don't know anything about the Young Felon until this climactic scene that happens. Kurosawa's movie, The Last Hour.
everything but the last five minutes maybe is a police procedural. Like it's the kind of law and order-y, and the book is built is called King's Ransom. It's like kind of a pulpy crime novel by the writer, the guy who get basically gets credited with creating the police procedural as a genre. Ed McBain. Ed McBain. Because the cops are inept and because I think Denzel wants this to be like a real mono, a mono showdown between
the old you know, the older mogul and the young star you know, the young up and coming rapper. This is where it's just like the just the indignities done to Jeffrey Wright in this movie are so many. So Jeffrey Wright, people were confused about whether Jeffrey Wright was a was actually in on it. not just it was it was Anne, but it was also well Me, I was I didn't know. The text that he sent a friend in the movie.
What he's actually doing there is saying, hey, you know, he's a felon. He's not supposed to be can he's not supposed to be consorting with people, criminals. He's sending he's saying, I need to go see what the streets are saying. He's a convicted felon in New York State. He should not he's not legally allowed to carry a firearm. He has two. real quickly, the scene that you're talking about and why we were all confused. It looked like the Jeffrey Wright character was kind of hiding his phone. And not because he didn't trust the cops, but it made the audience.
Plenty of us, me included, think for at least a few minutes that Jeffrey Wright was in on it with the young Falon character. I I think because it was poorly shot. I think the intent was that he was saying, I've got to I can't let the cops know that I'm actually gonna go back to the streets because this could be a problem for me. There was a callback though, because he had done that earlier in the movie. And then so he He reached out to the streets. Exactly. And he was doing it again. So I think they were relying on that, but again, that's sloppy. Yeah, it's super sloppy. Yeah.
I just want to get back to the indignities of Jeffrey Wright because he then rolls out again with his buddy. Like it's him and Denzel. It's it's first of all, call some backup in that was so unbelievable. You had a note in here, you're like, you're an eighty two year old man who needs to have his knees replaced and you're gonna go run it after some twenty seventy. Put some respect on Denzel. Eighty two. I will say the man can still move at his I hope I can move. I can I hope I can move half that well at his age.
But Jeffrey Wright is right there with him. Again, this is like a very loyal, dutiful character, but he's nothing more than a plot device. Cause the moment Spike Lee is like, rather than having him as as Denzel's backup, he does this thing where like A$AP Rocky just shoots a stray at him, it hits a windshield, and it basically blinds him. So he's out of commission. And that's the way that Spike Lee is like, okay, we gotta get Jeffrey Wright.
Out of the city. It is an indignity and it does It's a real indignity. Okay, but before that, there's another indignity, which Jeffrey Wright is asked to do product placement for not one folks, but two insurance companies. Because he pulls out a gun and Denzel says to him, What's that? Insurance. That's Jake from State Fall.
That's Jig from State Farm. And then Denzel ends up taking that. And that's a normal size gun. It's like a it's like a Glock. It's a nine millimeter or something. And then he pulls out another gun that's like a desert eagle. It's a desert eagle, like 50 kill something. And says. He's literally calling back to the actor who plays the angry cop.
But just and it's not clear that that's intentional, but it's also kind of like it had to be totally intentional. Did A twenty four fund this with the help of the Jordan brand? With the help of Allstate and State Farm. That was like the most consistent laugh line I think the whole movie got was this is mayhem. but I think I think it was like not a sufferential disbelieving laugh line. It was a laugh at the expense of the film. We we all kind of went, Wow, this is how they made this thing. Okay. Can I set up the the the moment? Please do go for it. Okay. So the rap battle.
It is scintillating. Is that the best part of the movie? It's incredible. And it and it's because you get to see A$AP Rocky. Okay. He's introduced finally visually. So the scene where David King, Denzel Washington's character, finds the whereabouts of Young Felon is because he finds his apartment. First of all, another another cameo and another product placement. A twenty-four appears on the door of the apartment. The door of the apartment where they live. Okay.
And there's this great scene that does happen with the Princess Nokia. She's fantastic. Their scene's great and he finds that she's wearing the bracelet that was stolen. Yeah. so she tells Denzel where to find young Fallon because he accidentally. She doesn't realize that he's he shows up on the pretense of I am gonna I'm gonna talk to him about his his career as a hip hop artist. That assumption. Right. Right. Like totally. Well, and because an another's another
example of a man not communicating with his partner, like she doesn't know he's just stolen 17 million dollars. Denzel comes to door, it's actually a really sad moment where I think of dramatic irony where the the audience realizes something the character definitely doesn't, which is like you think you're like punching your partner's ticket to his dreams, you're actually sending him to hell. Yeah. Yeah. And it just that's the moment where you start to develop like
That's where the real conflict comes into the it comes into play because you're like, all of a sudden he's humanized, A$AP Rocky humanized, and you're like, my goodness, like there's gonna be more to this film. It's where I start, like my head starts going towards restorative justice. Like, how are we gonna bring this together now that we have this important information about this human and
How he idolizes you. You think it's headed to a redemption arc. And I started to get a little excited. And our audience talked about it afterwards. And I don't want to jump on what happens at the end and compare it to high and low yet. But in this scene, also the other thing that happens that's really fascinating, Princess Nokia is phenomenal. Yeah. You can't take your eyes off of her, you can't take your ears off of the things she's saying. And like A$AP Rocky,
They're the two probably least experienced actors in this film. And it's like they didn't give a shit about the script and therefore just kinda did their thing. And it invited Denzel to do his thing. And Denzel can clearly cook with a scene partner. Yeah. Where they just go, What are our intentions in this scene? And let's just go do some stuff. Yeah. I don't know where he got it from and I didn't ask where he got it from, but I know it's not no Cartier. You mind if I take a picture of it? I'm I'm thinking of Malkin.
My wife's Give my good side. Princess Nokia's character tells Denzel where to find Young Felon. Okay. He sneaks into the studio. And this is not like a professional studio. This is in the bowels of some random building around the corner. It's the most New York thing about this movie. Uh-huh. So yeah, he's he sneaks into the studio. And it's convenient because A$AP Rocky's character, Young Felon, he's like given lines of a track called
with eyes closed or something, which made it really convenient because Denzel Washington's sneaking in to to like get him. Yeah. but what ensues is this and and look, there's no way we're gonna paraphrase what happens, but the there's a rap battle that is improved. And then this is where Spike Lee, I could not believe, said this in an interview. I think it was the What do mean improved? This was created on the fly that when it's like the most believable Denzel is the whole movie. Exactly.
I have a feeling that the Princess Nokia scene was improved a lot too. When they rolled the cameras, Spike Lee did not know that Denzel was going to enter into this kind of spitting back and forth with Aesopraki. That is like a moment of pure genius. It's why it's it's scintillating. Again, my brother surprised me because it was not it wasn't the script. So we'll go on. You improvise the rap battle?
It well it was it it was badly written. So D improvised. He kills he comes out with no There's no way anybody doesn't think we need to see A$AP Rocky. the way like SAP Rocky's already warmed up, like he's like in rap battle mode the whole time.
Denzel like warms up to it in a way that I actually like maybe that's the only scene I would need to rewatch, or maybe like that till, you know, the the prison scene later. But like I know, right.
I'm a chance giver. Chance. Yo, you mad lace, huh? Like I got chills in that scene and that scene only. Yeah, go. And also just their humanity that comes out from both of them. They're their storytelling, their like explaining parts of their lives and parts of their lives to each other and understanding each other, which was why I was like, my gosh, we're heading towards a restorative justice moment. And I got so excited. Yeah, as as a as a teacher, you were like, Can I use this in my class? Exactly. I was like, I might use this in my class.
Okay, so I I almost feel like how do we not go to the end? Because there's not much of consequence or interest. I that I recall that happens between this point and the end of the movie. There's a little bit of a bit of a long protraction. There's a moment where ASAP Rackies on top of a subway, kind of like Miles Morales. I was like, this is really odd. Really weird. Really weird.
It's I I think A$AP Rocky can do just about anything. I don't know if he's like hims silver surfing on the top of a New York subway is where I would have gone. But it wasn't it wasn't necessary. I mean, I I I I get it because what happened that I find interesting is that Spike Lee felt committed to the ending the mono a mano thing and the trajectory of the kidnapper character from high and low. But if you're going to reimagine it, reimagine it as a redemption.
Yeah, yeah. Like, my god, he could have he could I now I I actually just the silver surfing thing that you talked about, is that what you call it? Yeah, I called the silver surfing in the New York subway. He gets caught. It's really I I just he gets knocked out, which is also clunky how that happens. It's like 68 year old Denzel punches him out. He jumps down onto Denzel and they tussle around and then like Denzel clocks him. He's still the equalizer, you know, whatever. I is he? I'm not sure. It's still training day. I don't know. I'm not easily convinced.
Martin Scorsese makes the Irishman. That's pitiful. Mm-hmm. There are people who love the Irishman. I'm not one of those people. I'm not one of those people because I'm sorry, the moment you need the intervention of technology to make it seem like Robert De Niro has the physical gravitas to go kick someone's ass, you're in trouble. Don't make the movie. It's okay to get old, folks. Mm-hmm.
Anyways, he gets knocked out and he's apprehended. He goes to jail and there's a moment where he says he makes like his one phone call from jail, the young felon character, Asa Rocky, and he wants to talk to, again, from high and low as well. He wants to talk to He will only talk. I will only talk to David King. And they have the scene together. Let's talk about the technical thing first because I thought it was really, really cool. It was the floating Dolly idea, and and Spike Lee talked about this in the on the Remnick interview. He
So they're they're sitting in like a in a in one of those like glass separated sort of conversation booths that is every prison movie. High and low has it too. Yep. Yeah. So just those don't really exist anymore, by the way. They don't, actually. Yeah. It's really off of what you have now. It's basically like telephones in many places. interesting. When you're like separated by a lot of like you may be on the same campus, but
Nowhere near in the hand thing anymore. They can't even see see each other beyond the screen. Yeah. But then they use the two floating dollies and then it allows them to compress the space to where it looks like they're being pulled together, which is really cool. Yeah. Awesome moment. And it sold the moment, but then the moment is about young Fallon basically, you know, just like in high and low, he has a moment of kind of diabolical rage. Yeah. And then it's over. He is ushered away.
Ingo, you want to tell us what happens in the very last scene with the musical performance and how you read it. And by the way, I'm gonna start with that's fucking awesome. Ingo's like, here I go. That's great. But it's and it starts, okay. So the dust settles after this scene where young Felon's like, you should sign me. We could make tons of records. And he thinks he's got David King right where he wants him. David King says, Nope, I want you to rot in jail. I don't care. And
All money's not good money. All money's not good money. But also it's like, well, the money could really help this dude's infant son and Princess Nokia, who Denzel did have a connection with. And neither neither A$AP Rocky nor Denzel mention the two people who are gonna be I mean, as much affected by A$AP Rocky going to jail as ASAP himself. But all again, absent women and children. Exactly. And it all makes you feel deeply uncomfortable. It's then the penthouse.
They're back and stack and hits records and it's not actually Stack and Hits Records, right? Because he sa he has to sell Stack and Hits Records just like in High and Low, but he started his own little boutique agency. His yes. That's now like basically a family office for his wa son his wife and his son is wearing a suit on the couch. Ooh. It's a nice little suit too. It's got like a camouflage vibe. It is a nice suit. It's a it's a let's dial back the clocks to two thousand and four. It's even referenced by his son. Trey says it's like two thousand four again because because of
The way he sacrificed his money to get back his Jeffrey Wright's son, the public, just like in just like in Heinlow, the public reacts really favorably to that. He's a hero. And he's a hero, and now he's successful again and all his artists are doing really well. But how does he use that heroism? Yeah. Not to sign the like the gritty rapper who's talking about the streets right now, but I'm gonna describe what the first shot is of the very final moment.
And then Yo, I'd like you to describe what happens. It begins with an insert on a jewel encrusted crucifix around King David. Sorry, David King. And what happens then? Love it. A girl probably lower twenties. Yeah. and a baby grand. What is the Steinway and Sons? Steinway Sons piano. a a man, a beautiful man in a suit.
who sits down at the keys. Might have almost in tucks and tails. Yeah. It's kind of wild. Mm-hmm. And then a gorgeous song plays for about two to three minutes, I think, the entirety of a song. Pretty much. Which I found quite beautiful, but also very jarring in that mode. By the way. It's gorgeous. Exquisite. Yes, exquisite. And
You know, connects you to that part of you know your soul that loves music and connects. I mean, that's the idea behind this, right? Is it connecting Denzel to that piece of him that was suppressed or lost, and he's coming back to himself. and so I liked that, but it didn't fit, it just did not fit with everything else that was going on. In a a different movie, I might understand what's going on here, but this is quite literally the ending. Yeah. This is the resolution. Okay.
High and low ends with Takeuchi, which is the young felon character of that movie, the kidnapper, being taken away to jail with him screaming.
That is what takes you to the the the the end in the Kurosawa film. And you're left to just go, what the hell is capitalism doing to people? Yeah. Young people especially in nineteen sixty-three Japan that's that's trying to recover from whatever happened to Japan through World War II and the fact that there's a military base to Luke's point earlier. This movie ends with David King approving of this young performer and signing her to his new record label. And, you know, Denzel.
This is his. This is what he wants to say. He says in the interview with Remnik, I don't care about Tarantino. I don't care about anything. I care about God. And you you can't help but go and conflate God and capitalism. Go, this is kind of some prosperity gospel.
vibe to me. Yeah. Part of the reason I was so lulled into a sense of like, I like this ending was because you see the family unit together. And it is like a moment of like, thank goodness the family has come back together even after that horrifying moment in the middle where Zenzel was
Kind of abusing his son, and you know, and where the wife has been silenced is now she has a voice and she's back in the process, or at least like being considered. Cause what did she say? I'm the C I can't remember, but she had a role in the company, right? Yeah. and so does Trey. Mm-hmm. And Denzel is connecting to himself. He's connecting back to the music. He's walking over that Brooklyn Bridge again. And so that's what you wanted.
Yeah. You know, in an ending about a growth story of a man. But it mi but it doesn't tie up all of the pieces together. And that's why it feels incomplete and confusing. Well, and it just takes the other man in the story, the two people who are at odds, and it's just like that person is less than an afterthought, and so is their newborn child and their partner. It's a good, bad dichotomy. There is no room for nuance there. Yeah.
I I'll be thinking about this audience for the rest of my life, I think. But there was this moment of so your friend Wesley says this. I don't know feel like everyone's like was wholesome and stuff. I honestly was really disturbed by this film. I felt more as someone I grew up gangbanging, I ain't gonna lie, like I grew up on the streets, I don't know what the streets is like. So I felt more on ASAP side. I was like, he's just trying to eat. Like he got a kid, he's living in the Bronx right now. He's lived like when he thought like it's like forty fifth in Davis and
I was like, he's living in the hood right now. I was like, you're not in a good spot, my boy. Like you're in a bad place to live. I was more interested in Aceat Rocky's character. I was more interested in like finding out that. Like I didn't really feel humanized by anybody except Trey Kyle and was a young felon. Like I was like them, and then when Princess Nokia comes in and like is talking about the Cartier bracelet, yeah. Like I really felt that she's just like, my god, everything is happening. This is the greatest dream come true. This dude doesn't give a damn about her. She's just like the greatest thing.
I'm sure like twenty minutes later her whole world collapsed behind her. And so like I really think about that more in this film. And like, I mean ASAP is that New York story, like rapper from the middle of nowhere, pr you know, pretty boy Flacco into this like actual like mogul billionaire married to Rihanna now. I think they were trying to capture that story. I think Can we talk about that moment for a minute though? Because I think what happened for me in that moment where I was sitting in the theater listening to Wes, yeah, whose opinion
I really valued in that moment and that perspective helped me realize, I was feeling I had two feelings because all along, right, I wanted to use this film in my classes of restored. And so I was thinking that earlier on. Then I got lulled, very much lulled, into this space at the end of the film where I'm like, it's tied up with the bow and isn't it wholesome? And the song is beautiful, and Denzel is back to himself. And
So I wanted that moment and this like the sanguineness of that moment to override the discomfort that I was feeling that there was not a redemption story for A$AP Rocky. And I let it until someone else kind of checked me on it. And I think that's like a really important moment for me and for all of us, you know, just the importance of.
Diversity of opinion and ideas and being able to dialogue and talk with people and me being able to explore that in myself and the tension that it caused and created for me. Absolutely. It basically what Inga's describing is that capitalist fantasies are seductive. And so that's what we have to remember when we watch these movies. It's like, God, that's so cool. Look at him. He's kicking ass. Yeah. And then you're like, well, A$AP Rocky, but also
Princess Nokia, the kid. They're portraying a fantasy version of New York. They're showing real images of New York, but the society that they're portraying is one where black wealth is valued, black culture is valued, it's important, it's everywhere. This missing black child is taken very seriously. There's this tongue in cheek remark about the ebony alert. But even with all of that, you know, at the end of the day, like A$AP Rocky care his character's kid is gonna be without a father for twenty five years.
And nobody blinks an eye, everyone's like, Yep, we know whatever. And that is the foundation of capitalism and it is also the foundation of black capitalism at the end of the day. I don't feel like there's much to be said after that. No, I really don't think there is. She's a poet. Yeah, we kinda touched on it earlier, but that is about as well said as it gets. And I I'm so stoked about that audience. Yeah. It was really it was really beautiful.
All right, so high low. To describe some of the key differences and why I think high and low is considered a masterpiece and why I think when it's all said and done and Spike Lee's done making movies and Denzel, maybe if nothing else, it invites a conversation about where it fell short or gets people to watch high and low, which has a very clear point of view. Totally. But like let's build that thing from the ground up, high and low. Came out in 1963. It's set in post-World War II.
Kurosawa is clearly uneasy about a couple of things in this movie. The impact that a consumer economy is already having on Japan and that he expects is going to continue to have on Japan. It's been 15 years since the end of World War II, and the influence of Western aka American culture is already everywhere. It's set in Yokohama and
Yokohama is a port city. It's a trade city. It's basically the south it's southwest of Tokyo. It's not in Tokyo. It's really close. It's an independent city, but it's also a massive hub of trade. And when the city of Yokohama is introduced, the music is foreboding. It's dirty, it's poor, it's street level. It then travels to this hilltop mansion of the wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo, played by Toshiro Mifune.
The twenty-third film of Akira Kurosawa and his sixteenth with Toshiro Mifune. Wow. My God. Wild. So the players in the movie, we've talked about it. Kingo Gondo is a rough let it roughly translates to wealthy figure of authority. The kidnapper's name is Ginjiro Takeuchi. His wife is Reiko. The trusty sidekick, the Jeffrey Wright character, doesn't really exist. Yep.
In high and low. Instead, there's a secretary character named Kawanishi who betrays Gondo to the board of this company that he's trying to take over. There's a humble worker named Aoki who plays the chauffeur. Right. Who's the chauffeur character, but is basically only he's only seen to have this kind of subservient. Yep. His head is constantly bowed. He he sobs openly. He feels pathetic for even asking Gondo for money. Yep.
It's very much a portrait of like joke Japan's becoming a capitalist industrialized nation, but it used to be a feudal industrialized nation. Yeah. And so it's like the wife is dressed in like more traditional garbage. Yeah, kimono. and they are all dressed sort of like Western businessmen. And so it's this real like mix. And I think the other piece before we're talking about
Differences and similarities. So Dumbo, New York, has been so thoroughly gentrified, you could not see a slum from Denzel Washington's house. There is no it's it's the financial district to his, you know, left when he's looking on his thing. It's the lower east side, which is now one of the bougier parts of New York. He doesn't even have a window out the back. So whatever's going on in the rest of Brooklyn, he can't even see. He's looking down on Manhattan and across the river. The Brooklyn that Inga grew up in.
might have served as a great sort of analogue for Yokohama of nineteen sixty three. Right. And so you can understand why Spikley and Denzel Washington didn't do the same thing with Highest 2 Lowest, but what they did do just ultimately didn't make sense. And so person who kidnaps the chauffeur's son in High and Low can literally look up from his shanty at King Kogondo's house.
A$AP Rocky lives like a hundred blocks away from Denzel, right? So he has He uses a phone to close that space. Yep. Because of social media. It's one of the best moments that we we heard from our audience. And let's play that clip really quickly because I think it's great. And how we look at the like Facebook or whatever and anybody can see into your into your household or your life and
you know, kind of look at you and almost like say, wow, I could have that or that need to be just like that person. So what Eddie's pointing out, and we've talked about this with parasocial relationships to social media and Eddington quite a bit, right? You are given the idea that you understand people, that you know people and famous people in in particular. So that's I think a really clever intervention in Highest 2 Lowest is that the young fellow in character is obsessed with social media and that's how he's able to close that space. But in
High and low, the Takeuchi character, the the kidnapper, is able to see from his shanty in the slums of Yokohama. He's able to see that hilltop mansion and he becomes obsessed with Gondo character who manages what's called the National Shoe Company. And what's really interesting, marrying the kind of artisanal side of pre World War Two. Should Gondo was a character who really cared about shoes. He was like he was passionate about it, which I think is really cool. They have to be durable shoes. They have to be durable.
But the board wants to make cheap disposable shoes that are replaced every couple of years and especially to take care of American consumers. You get the idea these are going to be exported and taken right out of the port city of Yokohama beneath them. The kidnapping happens really early. There are only two sets. The cameras don't leave that set for probably an hour. It's an hour of the same room, basically. And frankly, it it satisfies a purpose. But I was a little frustrated. I was like, I'm starting to feel
Little claustrophobic, but it's intentional and it's like it's it works so great. Early on in the film, it's established that Gondo's wife, Reiko San, is upset. he says to her, A woman wouldn't understand. And she pushes back. And it's portrayed that this is not flattering to Gondo's character. No. Okay. We talked about that. His wife confronts him. She stands up to him and says that and he says that she's spoiled and projects that she couldn't handle poverty. Everybody's ashamed of him and his decision to not give up the the money. but that happens a little bit in Highest 2 Lowest.
The beginning is so stuffy, you actually start to wonder, am I ever gonna get out of this house on the hill? Is that what this whole movie is? Is it like twelve angry men? It's just all situated here because I'm like I need a break. Yeah. It it's working, but also it's it's kind of breaking me. But the third act, the third act is like entirely exploration of Yokohama. The second act on the subway is super gripping and it's actually fairly short. It's made very efficiently. Yep. the drop of the briefcases is tense, it's high stakes, it's like
Propulsive, your heart's pounding. It doesn't feel like you're safe when you're watching this part of the movie. I'm like, ooh. Whereas again, music, among other things. This is mostly just atmosphere sound design in in high and low. The an entire act, as Lucas pointed out, of the third act is this police procedural. The media and the police are working their asses off to solve this thing, which I thought was really interesting.
There's this kind of intersection between And there are just sorry, sorry, there are just so many more cops in Yokohama in the sixties trying to find this like shoemakers' kids. I don't understand it. There's thousands of cops. Every scene where they show the cops doing the diligence of their work, there's like a dozens. 150 cops. And they're hardworking and they're and they're sweating. Yeah, it was it was a beautiful scene. So good. And the intersection between Gondo, the dozens of detectives, the media, the kidnapper Takeuchi, it all becomes this incredible.
Incredible cat and mouse thriller. Yeah. And I'm going to describe what I think is one of the best moments you will ever see in filmmaking from Akira Kurosawa's 1963 High and Low. It's hot as hell on the ground. People are sweating throughout this entire movie. And these cops are going to all of the telephone booths to see because he's been making his calls for the the ransom negotiation with Gondo, Takeuchi has. And so they're trying to figure out which of these phone booths, right, can see the hilltop mansion.
It's hot on the ground. Meanwhile, it's cool and comfortable with the AC up high on the bluff. These two detectives are checking all these phone booths and they're wiping sweat from their neck and their brows the whole time. And one detective says to another, The camera's tracking with them. He looks up at the house on the hill and he says,
The kidnapper's right. That house, it gets on your nerves. It's as if it's looking down at us. Keep in mind he's a rank and file cop. The camera then lifts high and tilts down on the river. It's polluted. It's filled with trash and muck from both both poverty and industry. The camera picks up the reflection of a figure on the bank of the river across.
From the detectives. You only see the reflection of the figure, but it's visually disrupted by all the trash that's in the river. The camera has literally made the viewer watch this figure go through this reflection. It travels through all the crap on the river, but then the camera tilts up and reveals that it's the kidnapper, Takeuchi. And he's got a newspaper folded under his arm as he's walking through the slums. He's walking through a black market shop on his way to his riverside.
Very dilapidated shanty. Okay. Well, he even says he's like, I you you're always comfortable up on your hill. I was I could never sleep in summer or winter. Basically it's like other than when it's just like outside it's comfortable. I was un I'm uncomfortable in my entire life. Yeah. Inside his makeshift apartment, he reads the newspaper, he unfolds it and he reads it to see how the story of his kidnapping's being covered. Right. The first headline he reads excites him.
says shoe exec throws entire fortune out the window. But then he turns on the radio to hear a broadcast and he hears he hears Kidnapper has extraordinary hatred for Gondo. And he's like, he's getting stoked. You know, you could see this, these micro expressions of like titillation. Yeah. He's like, I did it. I pissed off Gondo. Fuck that guy. But the broadcast continues.
Yet Gondo's sacrifice has not gone unnoticed. Words of sympathy have grown into national acclaim for him. He turns off the radio. He's humiliated. He's angry. But he refocuses on the police that he knows are chasing him. He pulls back the curtain in his shanty, mirroring Gondo from earlier in the film. Gondo pulls back the curtain. What does he reveal? It's his mansion with and he lets in beauty and light, right? Takeuchi can't even see out of his window.
Because the glass is so dirty. He opens up his window and reveals these broken canted buildings and tipped over beer cans as he uses binoculars to check the alley for the police. All of this, my friends, happens in three minutes. And if I watched those three minutes, there's no dialogue. Yeah. There's just that little bit of audio, okay, and a couple newspaper moments. And you have to read the newspaper. Yeah. But other than that, this all just happens visually. And this is some of
The most incredible and efficient filmmaking storytelling you will ever see. The translation of high and low to heaven and hell is Tengoku to Jigoku, the low culture, okay, nightlife, the heroin addicts. Yep. My God, the final scenes of this movie. It is straight out of the best horror films you will ever see. Yeah. But it's incredible. Think about how also there was that nightclub scene where he's trying to buy some heroin, Takeuchi, and it's chaotic.
I think that's what Spike Lee was gonna like wanting to do with the Puerto Rican Day parade. And I think about how beautiful and and how much it says about Japanese and again, like Yokohama wasn't just a port city, it was a fishing village before the Americans came in and said, We want you to open up Japan in like 1850. So a hundred years before this movie, the Americans were like, You need to build a port here, more or less. The first time we see a non-Japanese face in this movie is in this nightclub, which is either full of
I was thinking like white American businessmen and black gi's.
It's this really, really chaotic scene, and it's played to be chaotic because they're trying to track Takeuchi as he's buying heroin for a an aspect of the film that doesn't even get ported over to Highest 2 Lowest. So it's like the chaos is there for a purpose. It also is another scene that explains so much about the culture of Japan, the culture of Yokohama, the way industrialism's coming, industrialized capitalism's coming, the way that Americans are all over the place, but only in these very specific and kind of touristy situations, and like in nightlife y situations.
And then you contrast that with Spike Lee's version of that is the jankiest Puerto Rican day parade ever. Chaos on the New York subway with a bunch of dickhead took his fans. And it doesn't explain anything. For the intention to piss off Red Sox fans. Let's go, Yankees! Boston sucks. Boston sucks. Yeah, and it doesn't so it's it doesn't serve any purpose at
So when Takeuchi invites Gondo or he says to that he wants Gondo to be the only person he visits in jail before being taken away and he's sentenced to death. Before being killed. Yeah. He's sentenced to death. Gondo stares across at Takeuchi, his portrait reflected right next to his face of the kidnapper. And then Kurosawa mirrors the same thing on the other side. So it's this shot reverse shot, and in each shot you see the other character reflected, right?
Gondo has joined a different company where he's allowed to make shoes again. And he's like kind of stoked. But it's just, it's just like it's said in a very muted moment of like, by the way, I'm I'm making shoes and I'm happy again. But then Takeuchi, who at this point is fully Luigi pilled. Okay. He says, I would rather be told the cruel truth than gentle lies. My room was cold in winter and hot in summer. My life has been hell since the day I was born. If I had to go to heaven.
I would really start to tremble, meaning he doesn't really want that. And I think there was a great comment made by someone in our audience about he steals the money in Highest 2 Lowest, young felon. What does he do with it? He hides it under a bed. Yeah. But Takeuchi is similar. He just hides it in his shanty. He doesn't know what the hell to do with it. Yeah. He really did want to just piss off Gondo to make a statement. And that's why it's cause him pain. That's why I say he's Luigi pilled. Because he's just like, no, this is awful. Yeah.
And Kurusawa wants the audience to reconcile that. Okay. The steel door closes. Takeuchi is dragged away. Gondo's left alone in the other side of the glass. And that's that moment where it's not redemption, but he's showing ultimately he is the wretched and doesn't want to become rich, but he's also showing you that his life has been suffering and torment. And he doesn't want to die. Yeah. This shit's staggering. It has so much gravity.
Kurosawa has made movies that were is typically makes movies that are both enjoyable but have a very clear point of view. And I think Seven Samurai, Yujimbo, et cetera. But like high and low is just unforgettable. Yeah. Let me end by saying this. Every meaningful beat of the story in high and low, where clues and motives for Takeuchi, they build like this emotional connection with the audience in Highest 2 Lowest have been interrupted, disrupted, replaced by cameos.
Product placement and intrusive music. Again, Takeuchi doesn't even know Gondo, has never met Gondo, didn't work at his shoe factory, didn't get screwed over, didn't get fired by him, didn't get ignored by him. He's just the avatar for the wealth that was generated that also then, as a as a consequence, caused his suffering through life. There is no connection at all. And yet I felt like there was a much better connection and bigger connection at the end.
than with Highest 2 Lowest, even though there is a more direct connection between Denzel and ASAP. Real quickly, what did you two think of the all the kind of camera work, exploration and movement through the like shopping districts of Yokohama when the cops are tailing Takeuchi? I was mesmerized. Yeah it's beautiful. And then there's one of the most beautiful things in the whole movie and it's it's played so quietly.
Where Takeuchi sees Gondo staring into the the the shoe store. Yeah he's a shoe man, man. He loves shoes. He's a feet guy. He's a he's a shoe fetishist. And he's staring in. Yeah, shout out Jordan Brand. He's staring in this window, looking at all these shoes, and Takeuchi spots him. And he walks over to him, doesn't say who he is, doesn't say anything. He bums a cigarette just so that he can get an up close portrait of Gondo. Yep.
This idea of young felon got to see intimate portraits of King David, David King, through social media. Takeuchi's never seen him up close. He bums a cigarette and then just watches him as Gondo San gives him a cigarette, lights it, and he walks around the corner. Yep. And that's the last you see before he ends up being apprehended. stunning stuff.
So we c we clearly think we clearly think Hyla was a was a beautiful movie that is like this really prescient and and precise critique of capitalism. Highest 2 Lowest kind of feels like Spike Lee missed the point of the original movie or chose to make a movie that didn't include the point of the original movie. I don't think I would watch this movie again. I do think though, and this is I'm a partially asking this question directly to you, Inga, give me the Highest 2 Lowest cinematic universe young felon, written and directed by Ryan Coogler.
Who I think, and again, no shade on Spike, no shade on Spike actually past or present. Like I think he still is capable of building really beautiful worlds and making beautiful movies. But the the the filmmaker that I think is thinking most just about American experience, or one of the those that's making the most about American experience, not even black American experience, is Kugler. Yeah. So Ryan starts off in on the mean streets of Brooklyn or the Bronx. Yeah.
Exploring the backstory and the childhood. Yes. Right? Of Young Felon. And that sets the stage for everything. It gives us our context, it helps us understand who he is deeply as a human being. And then we have the movie sort of play out as it does. And then Denzel, in that moment, when they are in the jail, makes a different decision and the tree splits, and you have
and then you have an alternate reality version of this movie. I think that would have been a much more satisfying movie. In that interview when when Scorsese came up, I couldn't help but think of King of Comedy. Do you guys know King of Comedy? To me, it's you know, so it's a a character, Rupert Pupkin, played by Robert De Niro. He's an obsessed aspiring comedian who dreams of appearing on a late night talk show. When his idle talk show host, Jerry Langford, played by Jerry Lewis, rejects him. Pupkin kidnaps Langford.
To force this big break and it blurs the lines between ambition and delusion. That's the like quick clef note summary of it. You know what would happen to me if I went there now? You know I'm not stupid. Nobody's calling you stupid. You pull this off, that makes you very smart. You know, Jerry, I'm gonna tell you something. Friendship is a two way street. You know that?
Yeah. It's extraordinarily funny. Sandra Bernhard's in it and she's r also brilliant in it. Really, really great movie. Another great comp, I think, is Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thief, or even Curtis Hanson's LA Confidential. The whole like procedural cops, like I it just the minutia stuff and the mechanical side of it, obviously entirely different stories with very different ideas in mind. Right. But those are the couple movies that came in mind for me. And so yeah.
Watch those instead. Yeah. I can't recommend it either. I have to admit, it's like it's culturally relevant, but it just felt like all actually don't know if it's culturally relevant. I mean, I think Kurosawa's film, I I felt like it was so strange to watch it in black and white to know when it was filmed because I kept thinking this must have been filmed later. This is like a critique, a modern day critique. Yeah.
And it was film and I couldn't get that out of my head, is that I'm watching a film about today. Yeah. But it was filmed in the sixties. Yes. Wild. That is so funny. It's timeless. Fuck. It's such a great point, Ingo. Kurosawa's movie has more to say about 2025 than the movie we just watched. Absolutely. Which is part for the course. I mean, it is a confusing time. Yeah. Do we feel good?
Did we did we land the plane? Did we get our takes out? I kinda think so. We we gotta I think I think ending with Inga on how High and Low is a more purposeful and meaningful portrait of 2025 than the movie actually made in 2025. That's it. I think that's the takeaway, right? Inga? Yeah. Do you agree? Do you concur? I concur. All right. Let's shout out the magic lantern.
Go watch Caught Stealing the latest Aronofsky movie starring Austin Butler. I'm tired of that trailer. I can tell you that. I really want to see the movie though, because it feels like it's not gonna it this is not an Aronofsky I know well. Like I love Aronofsky. It's very propul it almost feels like a Guy Ritchie movie. At least the trailer does. A hundred percent. And it feels like they released the trailer trying to get that same audience, but then it's like, but it's Aronofsky. I don't it's weird. Well, we'll see. It the trailer is I'm gonna go see it. The trailer does not look good to me.
Our next episode is going to be an interview and conversation with EFIS director Carson Lund. He's coming, folks. And that'll probably come out in the next couple weeks. We're gonna take a break from doing movies for a second because every time we do one of these, we apparently don't know how to not talk for two hours. Thank you, Inga Laurent. Welcome. You better come back, and next time we promise it won't be this long. Well, no promises, but we promise to make it worth your while. Is it gonna be wicked too? you wanna do the second part of Wicked?
It's November. It's okay. Okay. All right. All I'm down. Come back for Wicked Part 2. All right. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify. We do have a Patreon, so you're welcome to do that as well. Thank you, Inga. Thank you, Luke. Thanks, Inga. Thanks, Benji.
In time.
Mm-hmm.