A match made in Brooklyn: The films of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington
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Scott and Lee cross paths in Washington's oeuvre within the subgenre of the New York City heist film. Scott turned the greatest NYC heist movie ever made, 1974's 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three' into a nearly unwatchable disaster of a remake. In 'Inside Man,' Lee dropped Denzel into a role inspired by Walter Matthau's character from the original 'Pelham' — right down to the hat and the hostage negotiations.
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In honor of 'Highest 2 Lowest,' the reunion of 'Spike and D' (as Lee calls the duo) 19 years after 2006's 'Inside Man,' let's look at the four other films they made together. I'll provide the star rating I gave each film when it was released.
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Mo' Better Blues (1990)
Lee's follow-up to 'Do the Right Thing' was always going to draw unfair comparisons to that film. It's a completely different movie in tone and subject. It's also nowhere near as good.
The first pairing of Lee and Washington casts the actor as trumpet player Bleek Gilliam. Bleek is the leader of a jazz band whose members include 'DTRT' holdovers Giancarlo Esposito on piano and Bill Nunn on bass. On saxophone is the star of Lee's next movie, Wesley Snipes. Snipes plays Bleek's romantic rival, Shadow Henderson.
I share Shadow's last name, but I play Bleek's instrument. So of course, I stared at Denzel's fingers every time he picked up that horn. Terence Blanchard plays the trumpet on the delightful titular theme song, written by the film's composer and Spike's father,
This film's Bleek and Shadow are romantically involved with Clarke Bentacourt (Cynda Williams), who wants to sing in the band. But Bleek won't let her. When she does sing, however, Williams's rendition of W.C. Handy's 'Harlem Blues' is incredible. Lee pays a sort of homage to this scene in the last few minutes of 'Highest 2 Lowest.'
Additionally, Bleek is doing the Mo' Better with Indigo Downes (Lee's sister, Joie). The scene where the two women show up at the same venue while wearing red dresses is an example of cinematographer Ernest Dickerson's masterful command of color in this film.
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This is a movie seen through a jazzman's eyes, with images alternating between searing reds and ice-cold blues. The trumpet in the opening credits gleams with a golden hue King Midas would envy. But the screenplay is a hot mess, and Lee got in some hot water over the film's stereotypical depiction of its Jewish club owners.
As flawed as 'Mo' Better Blues' often is, every image is a jaw-dropper, and Denzel is good, too. It remains Dickerson's masterpiece as a cinematographer. (★★★)
Denzel Washington as "Malcolm X."
Warner Bros
Malcolm X (1992)
Lee's next collaboration with Washington is also a masterpiece. It's also still the only Hollywood epic made about a Black person—it's 202 minutes long. Lee battled Warner Bros. and budgetary issues to complete the film. As Malcolm, Washington would have easily earned the Academy Award, but Al Pacino was due for the 'we owe you Oscar,' and won for 'Scent of a Woman.'
Once again, Spike and D are joined by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, editor Barry Alexander Brown, and
'Malcolm X' also benefits from fine work by Angela Bassett as Malcolm's wife, Betty, and from Lee's four-time collaborator, Delroy Lindo as West Indian Archie. But it's Washington's show from frame one. Whether giving speeches or marching slowly to his death (that scene has Lee's most powerful use of his trademark 'people mover' shot), Washington gives one of the greatest movie performances ever. (★★★★)
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Denzel Washington (left) stars as Jake Shuttlesworth and Ray Allen is his estranged son Jesus in 'He Got Game,' directed by Spike Lee.
David Lee/Touchstone Picture
'He Got Game' (1998)
Considering his near-Biblical love of the Knicks, it was inevitable that Lee would make a B-ball parable. This one even has a high school genius savior on the court named Jesus! He's played by former Boston Celtic Ray Allen.
Allen holds his own against the scene-stealing Washington, who plays his incarcerated father, Jake Shuttlesworth. But this movie is absolutely ridiculous. The plot involves warden Ned Beatty allowing Jake a week-long furlough from jail so he can convince his son to sign up with the governor's alma mater. Jesus wants to turn pro instead, which sets up the film's conflict.
'He Got Game' shows how sinister
billion-dollar sports organizations can be in their seduction of poor Black kids with athletic prowess. Unfortunately, the film is undermined by its sexist treatment of women. At least Washington shows some of the menace he would bring to his Oscar-winning role in 'Training Day.' And that Afro suits him well. Plus, any movie whose title song is a duet between Public Enemy and Stephen Stills that samples Stills's 'For What It's Worth' can't be all bad. And the ending is an infuriating head-scratcher, yet somehow it works. (★★★,
but just barely
)
Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) and bank robber Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) face off in "Inside Man."
AP Photo/Universal Pictures/David Lee
'Inside Man' (2006)
While paying homage to the greatest New York City heist movies, Lee and Washington create a modern day classic of the subgenre. 'Dog Day Afternoon' is not only name-checked, it's also the film's main influence. A never-better Clive Owen plans the perfect bank robbery, and it's up to Detective Denzel to solve the case. The good detective is assisted by Chiwetel Ejiofor and a not-always cooperative NYPD. Willem Dafoe, Jodie Foster and Christopher Plummer (reuniting with Washington after 'Malcolm X') round out the excellent cast.
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I wouldn't dare spoil how 'Inside Man' turns out. But, if you want to know more about the making of the movie—and trust me, you do—you should attend
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
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The 1959 Ed McBain crime novel 'King's Ransom' has crossed the Pacific Ocean twice now, and its latest screen incarnation, 'Highest 2 Lowest,' makes for a disarming hand-off from the stern gravity of Akira Kurosawa to the exuberant restlessness of Spike Lee. It's also serious where it counts — in its reminder that cheapening a product, the thing you make, helps a bottom line only so long. In the McBain novel as well as the 1963 Kurosawa drama 'High and Low,' the protagonist's business was shoes. In 'Highest 2 Lowest,' Lee and debut feature screenwriter Alan Fox trade footwear for music, with Denzel Washington as a celebrated record label executive facing a kidnapping crisis, a scramble to hang onto everything he's worked for and a battle for his own soul. Some of that is handled on the story's surface. The best of it carves through that surface. 'Highest 2 Lowest' works with all the freedom and genre crisscrossing director Lee embraces so readily, as his latest, open-hearted valentine to New York City frames the ransom narrative. That narrative unfolds in the neighborhood of Kurosawa's version for about an hour. Music mogul David King (Washington) may be struggling to keep his empire together, as we learn, but the wry, ridiculously white opening-credits underscoring of 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'' accompanying elegant footage of King's penthouse view of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan beyond it, sets up a story of Black enterprise and the high cost of selling out. King, his regal wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and their son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) share a luxe Brooklyn waterfront perch with King's friend and driver Paul (Jeffrey Wright), whose own son Kyle (Elijah Wright, Jeffrey's real-life son) is Trey's best friend. At basketball practice, an unknown kidnapper grabs King's son for a $17.5 million ransom, only to learn he abducted Kyle, not Trey. 'Highest 2 Lowest' follows the same route, more or less, as Kurosawa's 'High and Low' up until King drops the ransom money from a moving subway. Then director Lee remaps the story, so that King's music milieu is exploited in intriguing and unexpected ways. A lot of detail work pays off; at one point, preceding a sharply realized encounter between Trey and his father in Trey's bedroom, we see crestfallen Trey, safe at home but guilt-wracked for his abducted friend, doom-scrolling through conspiracy theories suggesting this 'nepo baby' staged the kidnapping for personal gain. Lee's film offers many rewards, many of them performance-based. These rewards may cost you some pocket change in terms of plausibility and such. The wealthy, somewhat callous protagonist (Washington here, Toshiro Mifune back in '63) initially balks at paying the ransom money and wiping out his business to save his friend's son's life. Does changing your mind and doing the right thing when an innocent life hangs in the balance constitute a true and compelling crisis of conscience in 'Highest 2 Lowest'? Or just a strategic delay? The latter for me. Other snags are purely visual, notably the capper to the scene where King must toss the bag of ransom millions at a specific time and place, from a speeding elevated train. The capper relies on such an insane bit of coincidental timing, you may feel as if you're experiencing a series of micro-strokes watching it play out. But then, you know, you move on, because the payoffs that actually pay off more than compensate. Watching Washington and Wright share any of their scenes in 'Highest 2 Lowest' is pure pleasure. They're two of the greatest screen actors we have, that's all. Wright can take a simple line like 'Am I being detained?' and turn it into a summit of desperate meaning; it comes when Wright's character, pressing for police cooperation in the botched kidnapping, nearly loses his self-control because the cops in the King's penthouse are losing theirs. Washington, meantime, gives King not just stature, but ripples of conflict and doubt. The storyline needs them, and needs an actor who keeps us guessing. Scripted or improvised, at one point King expresses a private moment of rage wordlessly, pretending to finger-shoot a couple of weaselly colleagues after they've left his office, and then turning the pretend gun on himself. It's not played for laughs. Washington plays it for something a lot more interesting. Throughout, Lee treats this project with a generous viewfinder, as he and masterly cinematographer Matthew Libatique scope out everything from Eddie Palmieri, Rosie Perez and Anthony Ramos at the Puerto Rican Day parade to Nicholas Turturro screaming 'BOSTON SUCKS!' directly to the camera, warming the hearts of Yankees fans everywhere, none more devoted than the director of 'Highest 2 Lowest.' A model of conventional thriller suspense, the movie isn't. A stimulating cry for 'Black culture and artistic integrity,' in King's words, and for the true value of a well-made commodity, whether it's shoes or songs — that, the movie surely is. 'Highest 2 Lowest' — 3 stars (out of 4) MPA rating: R (for language throughout and brief drug use) Running time: 2:13 How to watch: Premieres in theaters Aug. 15; streaming on Apple TV + Sept. 5.
