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The
streets of New York
have been the setting
for countless crime
dramas, perhaps more
than anywhere
else. Apple TV+
and Netflix have added
two more to the
list. Each is
substantially different
from the other in tone
and purpose.
Neither is entirely
satisfactory, but both
are compelling,
especially because of
great actors playing
interestingly flawed
characters.
A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest begins
with a glowing sunrise
enveloping the
Manhattan/Brooklyn
skyline, accompanied by
a piece of music
you’d never
expect to hear in a
Spike Lee joint:
“Oh, What a
Beautiful
Mornin’”
from Oklahoma! Matthew
Libatique’s
sweeping camera settles
on David King (Denzel
Washington) standing on
the balcony of his
penthouse apartment, a
monarch surveying his
domain.
The screenplay by Alan
Fox presents David as a
legendary music mogul,
founder of
Stackin’ Hits
Records. The
penthouse he shares
with his wife Pamela
(Ilfenesh Hadera) and
teenage son Trey
(Aubrey Joseph) is a
showplace of Black
culture and
achievement; David and
Pamela are generous
donors to charities
helping Black artists,
as evinced in the
Basquiat and Kehinde
Wiley originals on
their walls. Each
day he heads to
Stackin’ Hits
headquarters,
chauffeured by his
ex-con best friend,
Paul Christopher
(Jeffrey Wright).
Trey and Paul’s
son Kyle (Elijah
Wright, Jeffrey’s
real-life son) are best
friends and basketball
teammates.
David sold his majority
interest in
Stackin’ Hits
five years
before. He wants
to buy it back because
a rival label wants to
acquire it and sell off
the backlog to make
commercial
jingles. However,
the purchase will clean
him out. He is
debating with Pamela
whether to go through
with the deal when he
receives horrible news:
a kidnapper calls,
saying he has Trey and
demanding $17.5 million
in Swiss francs as
ransom.
When it seems the news can’t get worse, it does: the kidnapper
took Kyle by mistake. Now David must decide whether he will
bankrupt himself for the sake of his friend’s son. Compounding
the danger, his partners have coldly informed him that the money
he needs for the ransom is legally earmarked for the buyout. If
he uses it for any other purpose, he will go to jail.
Up to now Highest 2 Lowest has been a fairly faithful adaptation
of Kurosawa. But Lee, as always, has many things on his mind,
and he lets those things take over in the movie’s second half. If Highest 2 Lowest isn’t as cohesive a police thriller as Inside Man or BlacKkKlansman, it still gets the audience’s blood pumping
with superb extended action scenes, especially one in which
David, the kidnapper and the police chase each other through a
crowded train and a Puerto Rican Day celebration. (The latter is
hosted by Rosie Perez, one of the stars of Do the Right Thing, and
features the great bandleader Eddie Palmieri, who died shortly
before the film’s release.)
Highest 2 Lowest is several things at once—a police procedural, a
character study of a man facing a powerful moral dilemma, a love
letter to New York (especially nonwhite New York), an essay on
Black music, and an exhortation for Black self-determination. The
film takes an odd bounce toward the end when David becomes a
vigilante, circumventing and outfoxing the police to find the
kidnapper. But then again, since Washington is one of the
screen’s greatest action heroes as well as one of its finest actors,
why not?
Some reviewers have revealed the identity of the kidnapper; I will
not. I will only say that his identity is crucial to Lee’s arguments
about Black music as a force for moral and societal good, and
what happens when Black musicians lose sight of that.
All the actors are excellent, especially Washington and Jeffrey
Wright. Washington’s best moment comes when, betrayed by his
colleagues, he simply swivels in his chair and stares at the ceiling,
wondering how his life came to this. Wright’s best moment is
when, accompanying David to find the kidnapper, he insists on
carrying a gun for insurance, calling it “Jake from State Farm.”
Zach Baylin and Kate Susman’s Black Rabbit, an eight-episode
Netflix miniseries, takes the grittiness revealed toward the end of Highest 2 Lowest and makes it all-pervasive. The show’s
beginning scene makes this plain. Jake Friedken (Jude Law) hosts
an elegant party at the eponymous Greenwich Village restaurant
he owns. On display are more than a million dollars’ worth of
jewels, belonging to the guests of honor—music superstar Wes
Williams (Sope Dinsu) and his designer wife Estelle (Cleopatra
Coleman). Two masked gunmen crash the party, intent on
stealing the jewels. Shots are fired, victims fall, and Jake finds
himself on the floor, staring into the barrel of a gun.
The action flashes back a month. Jake is preparing for a New
York Times reviewer to visit Black Rabbit that night, and exhorts
chef Roxie (Amaka Okafor) and sous-chef Tony (Robin de Jesus)
to outdo themselves. However, bartender Anna (Abbey Lee)
walks out the door, refusing to explain herself or say a word to
anyone.
Simultaneously, Jake’s brother Vince (Jason Bateman) is in Reno,
trying to sell his late father’s rare coin collection to a pair of
prospective buyers. The buyers pull a gun; Vince escapes,
running over one of the thieves in the process, but the other runs
off with the coins.
After that, Vince has nowhere to go but back to New York. Jake
reluctantly buys his airline ticket. Vince founded Black Rabbit
with Jake (they took the name from their semi-successful rock
band) and thinks he can work there again. Roxie, however, is less
than happy at the prospect of Vince returning. To put it mildly,
Vince has issues. The biggest is the $140,000 he owes loan shark
Joe Mancuso (Troy Kotsur). Mancuso’s vicious son Junior
(Forrest Weber) and henchman Babbitt (Chris Coy) are already
on Vince’s trail.
What Roxie and others don’t immediately recognize is that Jake
has issues rivaling Vince’s. Jake loves to present himself as a
master businessman and a solid citizen. He plans to reopen the
Pool Room, the famous site of the former Four Seasons
restaurant, with Wes as his backer and Estelle as his designer.
But Wes doesn’t know about the nascent affair between Jake and
Estelle, and nobody knows about Jake’s creative bookkeeping.
Meanwhile, Roxie and Tony wonder if Jake is looking after his
employees the way he should. Anna tells Roxie that Jules
Zablonski (John Ales), a Black Rabbit regular and darling of the
New York art world, raped her in an upstairs room, and Roxie
suspects Jake knows more about it than he lets on.
There is vastly more to Black Rabbit, which has been described as
a combination of The Bear, because of its restaurant setting, and Ozark,the crime series in which Bateman starred. I was also
reminded of Hell or High Water and Before the Devil Knows
You’re Dead, two movies in which quarreling brothers unite to
commit major crimes. All four of these dramas, unfortunately,
are better than Black Rabbit, which sometimes seems to be made
up of their spare parts. Also, the show is so unrelentingly dark
that its final scenes of atonement and healing feel tacked on.
What saves Black Rabbit is its propulsive direction (Bateman and
his Ozarkco-star Laura Linney are among the show’s directors),
its Stygian sense of impending doom, and—above all—its
actors. Everyone is flat-out great; Kotsur, especially, is terrifying
in a role as far removed from his genial CODA character as
possible. But the cynosures are Bateman and Law. Bateman has
made a distinguished career out of playing all-American types
who have gone to seed, and Vince Friedken may be the seediest of
all. Vince is an eternal juvenile delinquent; he wants to be a good
man and a good father to his grown, estranged daughter Gen
(Odessa Young), but he is a slave to his worst impulses. Jake at
least wants to be seen as a good man, but he has lied to himself
and others for years. Vince is ultimately the more sympathetic of
the two, because he has never pretended to be anything other
than what he is. Being with Vince helps Jake to realize that his
life is built on lies. Flashbacks to their childhood help explain
why, In the end, both brothers are overwhelmed with guilt and
remorse.
Though no masterpiece, Black Rabbit is an entertaining, often
riveting entry in the crime genre, Dysfunctional Family Branch.
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