Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reunite for thriller 'Highest 2 Lowest'

Like Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet, Spike Lee is such a quintessential New York filmmaker that any appreciation of his career should credit the city itself as one of his key collaborators. It’s hard to believe that Lee hasn’t made a movie in his beloved five boroughs since 2012’s “Red Hook Summer.” But 13 years of pent-up affection for the Big Apple come pouring out during the opening credits of his delightful new film “Highest 2 Lowest,” which begins with a spectacular montage of NYC skyscapes set to a full-throated, unironic rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

The incongruous use of a song from “Oklahoma” isn’t intended as a joke — at least not entirely — but rather, it’s in the same spirit as when Lee used Aaron Copland tracks like “Our Town” and “Appalachian Spring” to score his Coney Island-set “He Got Game,” making a case that these heartland Americana anthems are just as applicable to the concrete jungle. Looking at the breathtaking images collected by ace cinematographer Matthew Libatique, it’s hard to disagree. What a beautiful morning, indeed.

High above the city, in the Olympia Dumbo building’s extravagant penthouse overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge, lives Denzel Washington’s music business mogul David King. Called “King David” by his fans, he’s a fast-talking bootstrapper from the Bronx who wears a gigantic diamond stud in his ear. His company, Stackin’ Hits Records, dominated the charts two decades ago. But tastes change and nobody stays on top forever, especially when you’re as insulated by wealth and privilege as King David, whose ridiculous digs have Grammys on every shelf and Basquiats on the walls, competing for space with a gallery’s worth of framed magazine covers from which David’s smiling face beams back at him. It’s good to be the King. Sometimes.

He cashed out and sold the company to a soulless conglomerate years ago, and now the board is more interested in AI music, prepping a golden parachute for their founder once known for having “the best ears in the business.” But David’s not about to go without a fight, orchestrating an audacious bid to buy back the label, not out of any remaining passion for Stackin’ Hits so much as an aging alpha’s resentment at being put out to pasture. He probably should have first checked with his wife, who points out how infrequently the music mogul listens to music these days.

Washington is phenomenal — all smiling, sly fox charisma with a pronounced fear of diminishment creeping in around the corners of his eyes. David knows he’s lost a step or two, but he’ll be damned if that’s going to slow him down. Washington and Lee have been working together for 35 years, and the actor is always a little friskier when he’s in one of Spike’s joints. They’ve grown old together — Lee is now 68, Denzel turns 71 in December — and there’s an endearing “get off my lawn” quality to the picture, with an unsubtle undercurrent of two AARP-aged icons grousing about cancel culture, social media and where the entertainment industry is headed. (Spoiler: nowhere good.)

But the boardroom maneuvers are put on hold when King David gets a call from a kidnapper (shockingly well-played by rapper A$AP Rocky) who claims to have abducted his son. The only hitch is that he accidentally grabbed the chauffeur’s kid instead. The driver is an ex-con and old running buddy of David’s from their days back in the Bronx, played by Jeffrey Wright with the coiled intensity of a man who is always just barely staying on his best behavior. He’s a walking reminder of times our protagonist would rather forget, but when push comes to shove, he’s the kind of guy you want in your corner. The police are predictably useless, so we understand that eventually it will be on these two to resolve this themselves. Cue James Brown’s “The Payback.”

That’s when “Highest 2 Lowest” becomes one of those occasional reminders — like the buddy cop elements of “BlacKkKlansman” or the entirety of Lee’s absurdly entertaining Dubya-era heist picture “Inside Man” — that this filmmaker could have easily had a career making crowd-pleasing Hollywood genre movies, but decided that he’d rather be Spike Lee.

As cinephiles may have sussed out already, “Highest 2 Lowest” is a loosey-goosey remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic “High and Low,” itself an adaptation of the 1959 Ed McBain novel “King’s Ransom.” I’ve always been astounded that when not directing the greatest samurai epics in film history, Kurosawa relaxed by knocking out some of his era’s most gripping crime pictures. You don’t see a lot of artists equally adept at adapting Shakespeare and pulp paperbacks.

Being a tenured professor of film studies at NYU, Lee is appropriately reverential of the source material while also still a big enough goofball to pour tons of fun Spike stuff on top of it. The director’s hallmarks are all here: gravity-defying dolly shots; the swelling, horn-heavy score out of a 1940s melodrama; at least five endings; and incessant sports-related tomfoolery. This is the kind of movie where Rick Fox plays Denzel’s kid’s basketball coach, probably just because everyone on the set wanted to hang out with him, plus the added benefit of teeing up the film’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of Celtics disses. As I joked with a friend after the screening, who else but Spike Lee would remake a Kurosawa masterpiece and put Ice Spice in it? (She’s pretty good!)

As with “High and Low,” the first hour of the film is confined to the protagonist’s increasingly claustrophobic apartment, which Kurosawa compensated for with some of the most astounding widescreen camera blocking you’ve ever seen. Lee is one of the greats, but close quarters aren’t his forte, and the first half of this picture can feel a bit too cramped and talky for its own good. It’s not until we get out onto the New York City streets that “Highest 2 Lowest” starts scaling some serious heights, bustling and alive in ways that make other movies in theaters right now look anemic.

Lee cleverly reworks Kurosawa’s mid-movie, bullet train ransom drop into one of his most exuberant set-pieces, setting it on a crowded subway en route to a Yankees-Red Sox game during the Puerto Rican Day parade. There’s a moped chase, crashing cruisers and a live performance from the late Eddie Palmieri and his Salsa Orchestra, emceed by Spike’s “Do the Right Thing” co-star Rosie Perez. Poor King David is out there trying to be an action hero while New York City can’t help being New York City all around him. It’s a glorious sequence, an instant all-timer. Though perhaps a trigger warning is in order for Red Sox fans: we’re on the butt end of the filmmaker’s funniest “Boston sucks” jokes since the CBGBs scene in “Summer of Sam.”

“Highest 2 Lowest” gets more playful and personal as it goes on, a genre thriller that doubles as a self-reflexive meditation on aging, diminished ambitions and the star-director team’s status as statesmen emeritus in an industry that doesn’t have much use for its elders. (How insulting that this barely-advertised film is being sloughed off with a token two-week run on a handful of screens before it’s set to start streaming on Apple TV+. I’m old enough to remember when Spike and Denzel movies were considered cultural events. Now the director himself is on Instagram pleading with people to come see this one in a theater.)

The character of King David is something like a worst-case scenario for the filmmaker and his star: a man who lost sight of his art and fell for the art of the deal. What’s so exhilarating about “Highest 2 Lowest” is watching him rediscover what’s important, descending from his opulent penthouse back down into the streets, squaring off with the young felons and up-and-comers nipping at his heels. (A$AP Rocky’s character is literally called Yung Felon. Nothing makes me smile quite like Spike Lee character names.) It’s a movie about a guy getting his groove back, made by two artists dead set on reminding us that they never lost theirs, not for a damn second.

“Highest 2 Lowest” opens Friday, Aug. 15 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, Kendall Square Cinema and West Newton Cinema.