“Knicks! Knicks! Knicks!” yelled Spike Lee to the glitterati of Cannes as he entered the black-tie Lumière screening for his latest film, the kidnapping thriller Highest 2 Lowest. Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was the following night—his beloved team facing off against the Indianapolis Pacers at Madison Square Garden—so Lee had basketball on his mind, rolling up on the Croisette in an orange-and-blue pinstripe zoot suit, sporting a blue felt hat ribboned with orange along with blue eyeglasses rimmed with orange highlights.
Denzel Washington, the film’s star, wore a more sober black suit and looked a bit less cavalier on the red carpet. He had just flown in from New York a few hours earlier and had to boomerang right back to the airport once the film started. Still in the thick of his sold-out run as Othello on Broadway, Washington had no time to spare, so the Cannes Film Festival deliberately programmed the movie on a Monday, the one night when Broadway is dark.
Washington didn’t have time to stick around and watch Lee’s swaggering Gotham update of Akira Kurosawa’s classic nail-biter High and Low. But, once everyone was seated, he did stay long enough for the festival’s president Iris Knobloch and general delegate Thierry Frémaux to award a surprise honorary Palme d’Or.
“Because, Denzel, you are here,” announced Frémaux from the stage. “We want to make something special for you. A gift!”
“A bag of money?” Washington cracked under his breath to Lee as they sat in their seats.
“A way to show our admiration,” replied Frémaux with a laugh.
After the festival played a tribute reel with highlights from his most acclaimed performances—including clips from his two Academy Award-winning turns in Glory and Training Day, as well as his four previous collaborations with Lee (Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man), Lee and Washington joined Frémaux for the presentation.
“This is my brother, right here!” said Lee. “I love him, I love him, and I’m glad you’re here for all the people who love you.”
Washington, who hadn’t been to Cannes since his first visit in 1993 with Kenneth Branagh’s all-star Much Ado About Nothing, was a bit stunned by the unexpected accolade and the audience’s extended standing ovation. “This is a total surprise for me, so I’m a little emotional,” he said. ‘It’s a great opportunity to collaborate with my brother-from-another-mother Spike. We’re a very privileged crowd in this room—that we get to make movies and wear tuxedos and get dressed up and paid for it as well. We’re blessed beyond measure. So, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
“Thierry did a sneak attack!” said Lee during a panel interview at the American Pavillion the next day. “It was a secret. This was on the low-low. I asked Denzel, ‘You gonna put it on the shelf between your two Oscars?’ And eight shows a week of doing Othello—that ain’t no joke.”
But Lee was more tickled at the synchronicity of the previous night’s timing, since Highest 2 Lowest premiered on the same day, and in the very same theater, as Do the Right Thing in 1989. And May 19 was also the 100thbirthday of Malcolm X. “Just put that together!” said Lee. “It’s numerology. Things. Line. Up. That’s beautiful.”
A remake of High and Low had been knocking around for decades—certainly since 1999, when, during Cannes, the trades announced that Martin Scorsese was in talks to put together a version that David Mamet was planning to write and direct, potentially starring Steve Martin, William H. Macy and Joe Mantegna.
But it was Lee and Washington who finally got it made. As Washington’s music producer character David King says in the opening minutes of Highest 2 Lowest, “It’s not a risk. It’s a rebirth.” That bravado is also an apt summary for Lee’s brassy update, his most commercial movie since 2006’s Inside Man (not coincidentally his last Washington collaboration) and a powerful showcase for the actor’s skills.
King, the embattled head of once-great record label Stackin’ Hits, had cashed out a controlling interest to enjoy his success. But now outside investor Stray Dogs Enterprises wants to pay handsomely to control 100% of Stackin’ Hits’ roster of legacy artists for commercial-licensing revenue. “They’ll squeeze out every drop of black culture and integrity,” he sneers at the offer, hatching his own plan: pour every penny of his personal wealth, including mortgaging his penthouse duplex and Sag Harbor house, into a scheme to buy back the company.
What’s beautiful about Highest 2 Lowest is how Lee portrays the Black culture King talks about in the character’s posh apartment on Front Street, referred to in the film as the “DUMBO Olympia” of Brooklyn overlooking the East River. King’s walls are covered in priceless paintings and photos by icons like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden and Gordon Parks. “A lot of that stuff is my own art,” said Lee. “We made copies of it. My wife and I have Beardens, Basquiats. This is a type of Black excellence, you know? It’s inspiring when, in my office and my home, I’m surrounded by great artists and people who I love and respect.”
King’s plans to retake his company get complicated when a kidnapper calls and says he has King’s 17-year-old son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) and wants $17.5 million for his safe return. But then Trey comes home alive; and they all realize the one that got nabbed is actually Trey’s best friend Kyle (Elijah Wright), the only child of King’s widowed driver Paul (Jeffrey Wright). Does King still pay all the money—and go bankrupt to save another man’s son?
Adding a meta level to the anguish is the fact that Spike cast Jeffrey Wright’s real-life son Elijah. “I had very little to do with it,” said Wright at the film’s press conference. “I had no idea. He sent Spike some tape. And then I hear that Elijah’s reading with Denzel. And then I get a call from Denzel saying, ‘Yeah, we tried but I don’t think it’s going to work out. He did his best, but maybe the next one.’ And I said, ‘Man, you’re calling from Elijah’s phone! Stop playing with me!’”
A$AP Rocky plays the heavy in Highest 2 Lowest, and his two extended scenes with Washington—filled with tense provocations, psyche-out bluster, and flat-out threats—are electric showdowns. At the root of it all, though, is money. “It’s on the poster, and I made Denzel say this line twice: All money ain’t good money,” said Lee at the press conference. “We all have our own specific morals, and what you’ll do for money. And that’s what makes Kurosawa’s film so great. Denzel, he’s jammed up. He’s faced with a moral dilemma.”
“That’s where the moral dilemma is,” added Wright. “Is it money or love? And what do you do for that? But that’s the world we’re living in now, where everything is for sale, and everybody is for sale. Everything is transactional. I think we can do better.”
“Maybe we have to, right?” said Lee. “We have to.”
