Producers: Todd Black and Jason Michael Berman   Director: Spike Lee   Screenplay: Alan Fox   Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, Aubrey Joseph, Dean Winters, LaChanze, John Douglas Thompson, Michael Potts, Isis “Ice Spice” Gaston, Elijah Wright, Frederick Weller, Wendell Pierce, Nick Turturro, Rick Fox, Rod Strickland, Eddie Palmieri and Aiyana-Lee   Distributor: A24/Apple+ 

Grade: B

A closing caption makes clear that “Highest 2 Lowest” is a homage to Akira Kurosawa, but just as that great director radically altered its source, Ed McBain’s (i.e., Evan Hunter’s) 1959 novel “King’s Ransom,” to fit its new Japanese setting in “High and Low” (1963), Spike Lee reimagines Kurosawa’s film not just by modernizing and refashioning the plot to make it his own, but by returning it to its New York City roots.  (McBain’s 87^th Precinct was located in the fictional Isola, of course, but everyone knew it was really NYC.)

The film’s opening credits are set against swooning, wide-screen shots of the Big Apple’s skyline, set to the soaring strains of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma.”  Matthew Libatique’s luxuriating widescreen lens finally settles on a multi-level, terraced skyscraper set high atop a hill in Brooklyn’s trendy Dumbo neighborhood, finally focusing on a patio where David King (Denzel Washington), a music mogul, is exuberantly explaining his plans into a telephone.  He’s secretly arranging funding to buy back Stackin’ Hits, the record label he founded back in the day, which had been sold some years before to a conglomerate he believes is now planning to betray its cultural roots by selling off its catalogue and destroying its identity.  The scheme requires putting everything he owns—reflected in the sumptuousness of his apartment and office as fashioned by production designer Mark Friedberg and the elegant costumes of Francine Jamison-Tanchuck—on the line with creditors, but he’s imbued with renewed energy at the idea, even if his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) is taken aback at the thought of putting their lifestyle at risk for his dream of preserving his legacy—and adding to it.

One person David trusts implicitly is Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), the friend he grew up with in a rough neighborhood and hired as his driver after Paul’s stint “upstate.”  Their bond is further cemented in the next generation: Trey King (Aubrey Joseph) is the best buddy of Kyle Christopher (Elijah Wright), who’s also King’s godson, and the two are attending a basketball clinic together.  When Trey’s sidelined with an ankle twist, the two boys slip out of the training unobserved except by a kidnapper.  David soon receives a call saying that Trey is being held for ransom, and immediately decides to use the money he’s collected to buy back his label for the ransom, even though his loan agreements preclude his using the money for any undesignated purpose.  Then Trey shows up unharmed; the kidnapper has instead snatched Kyle, whom he’d mistaken for Trey because he was wearing Trey’s distinctive headband.  By then a bevy of cops have arrived, led by Detectives Bridges (John Douglas Thompson), Bell (LaChanze) and Higgins (Dean Winters), to take charge.  And David is confronted with a moral question: will he be willing to put his fortune, and perhaps his freedom, on the line to rescue his friend’s son rather than his own?

Thus far Alan Fox’s script has hewn fairly closely to the plot established by McBain and Kurosawa, but from this point Lee’s film diverges in important respects.  The earlier works become police procedurals in which the protagonist’s ethical quandary, while hardly forgotten, becomes secondary to the elaborate steps the authorities devise to try to identify and capture the kidnapper.  Fox and Lee don’t ignore their predecessors—indeed, the spectacular sequence they mount to depict how the effort to subvert the successful transfer of the cash, involving a subway ride crammed with Yankee fans led by a manic Nick Turturro, a street celebration where Eddie Palmieri is performing with his band, and a constellation of motorcycles passing the loot from one rider to another, is a far more complex version of the commuter train episode in Kurosawa’s film.  (And not just more complex, but more confused topographically, though viscerally exciting as shot by Libatique and edited by Barry Alexander Brown and Allyson C. Johnson, with further punch added by Howard Drossin’s score, which here abandons the lush, overripe tone it exudes elsewhere to opt for energy over voluptuousness.)

But in tracking down the kidnapper, it’s King and Paul who do the heavy lifting, with the police relegated to the background after the failure of their subway strategy.  And it’s King’s fabled musical ear and Paul’s street contacts, not dogged police work, that lead to the identification of the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky).  Curiously, when it comes to the impact of the incident on King’s career, endangered by betrayals and legal quibbles, Lee opts for something less cynical than Kurosawa’s denouement though no less a triumph of ideals, encapsulated in a coda spotlighting Ayana-Lee as a singer whose audition proves that King’s ear remains undiminished. 

But the motive behind the crime remains much the same, and Kurosawa’s confrontation-through-a-glass-barrier confrontation between perpetrator and victim is mirrored by Lee not once but twice, first with a clever rap twist and then with a critique of the inexplicable crudity of modern media frenzy.  (He fails, however, to come up with a counterpart to the Japanese director’s hallucinatory sequence set in the haze of a drug demi-monde, though King’s descent into the kidnapper’s subterranean world is presumably meant to fulfill that role.)  Lee also lightens things occasionally with in-jokes and some strategically-placed cameos by the likes of Rosie Perez and Anthony Ramos.

Throughout the focus is on Washington, who responds with a protean performance that powerfully captures King’s radical emotional swerves.  Wright’s turn as a widower infused with religious fervor who tries to navigate a way between loyalty to his friend and devotion to his son is less showy but nicely detailed, and A$AP Rocky contributes an unnervingly accurate portrait of a young man driven by anger and desperation.  Among the others Winters is most notable as a cop whose prejudices aren’t well hidden and whose volatility over failure reflect what is probably Lee’s attitude toward the force as a whole.

Despite the switch to superlatives in the title, Lee’s film doesn’t eclipse its more modest model, but it’s a smooth, engrossing—and personal—rethinking of McBain’s rock-solid premise.

Producers: Zach Cregger, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules   Director: Zach Cregger   Screenplay: Zach Cregger   Cast: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, Toby Huss, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, Clayton Farris, June Diane Raphael and Luke Speakman   Distributor: Warner Bros.

Grade: B

Zach Cregger’s second horror film suffers from the same defect that his first, “Barbarian,” did: after a superbly unsettling first half, it degenerates into something more predictable in the second—an example of great set-up, disappointing follow-through.  Yet even as it weakens, “Weapons” offers some undeniable pleasures, most notably an over-the-top but delectable performance by an actor who hasn’t had such an opportunity for scenery-chewing in years.  And if the ending, for all its gruesome humor, is a bit of a letdown, you have the memory of what led up to it to savor.

The picture begins with the voice of a little girl recounting a strange moment in her town’s history: the start of a day at the elementary school presided over by Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) which saw Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) walk into her third-grade classroom to find only one of her eighteen students in attendance—quiet little Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher).  The other seventeen, as security cameras around town will verify, had all awoken at 2:17am in the morning and rushed out of their houses, entranced, for some mysterious destination. 

Gandy immediately becomes the focus of the town’s hostility, with Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), owner of a construction outfit and father of one of the missing children, class bully Matthew (Luke Speakman), loudly demanding answers from her at a hastily-assembled community meeting.  That night, after picking up a couple bottles of vodka and going home to soothe her nerves with them, Justine is harassed by pounding at her door, and next morning finds the word “WITCH” painted on her van. 

On leave the next day, she’s met at a bar by Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), a cop who’s an old friend and tries to talk her down.  The two obviously have a history, and Paul’s wife Donna (June Diane Raphael) happens to be out of town; Donna’s also, incidentally, the daughter of Ed (Toby Huss), the police chief who’s Paul’s boss.  The night Paul and Justine share is only one problem Morgan will have with Ed, because he has to take the chief into his confidence after an encounter with James (Austin Abrams), a drifter who’s both a drug addict and a burglar, which ended with some dash cam footage on Paul’s police cruiser that could be incriminating in court.

After the prologue introduced by that little girl’s disembodied voice, the film proceeds through a series of interlocking chapters focusing on the main characters, beginning with “Justine” and proceeding through “Archer,” “Paul,” “James,” “Marcus” and “Alex,” shown largely from the perspective of each and often repeating events from a different viewpoint while adding detail and references to previous and later segments.  It’s a clever device that puts the viewer to work making connections for himself.  The last chapters introduce other characters who don’t get ones of their own—most notably Alex’s elderly aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), who becomes the boy’s caretaker when his parents (Whitmer Thomas and Callie Schuttera) fall ill, and Marcus’ partner Terry (Clayton Farris)—while explaining what’s happened to the missing kids. 

Frankly, given the premise with which the plot begins, there are a limited number of resolutions that would work.  One has been suggested early on; another appears when a character sees an apparition of a massive automatic rifle—perhaps a spacecraft—in the sky (presumably a reference to school shootings as well as alien abductions).  Cregger makes his choice of the possibilities and follows it through gleefully, both in terms of sudden shocks and an extended, bloody finale suffused with ghoulish humor that will either make you giggle with delight, as some do with Sam Raimi-like “Evil Dead” stuff, or avert your eyes in disgust.  To be honest, there are moments that, white effective in themselves, in retrospect play like mere red herrings that don’t fit in with the ultimate revelations—a really creepy scene early on in which Justine, asleep in her car, is approached by a spooky apparition, for example, has no payoff.  And one can justly complain that the perpetrator’s intentions, and the methods behind what the villain does, are never clearly explained.

But the flaws are minor, and easily overlooked while the intriguing plot carries you along, helped by Cregger’s astute direction, Tom Hammock’s evocative production design, John Murphy’s canny editing, an eerie score by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay and Cregger and—perhaps most importantly—cinematography by Larkin Seiple that creates a mood of pervasive unease, particularly through a deft use of tracking shots.  

And, of course, by an excellent cast.  These characters might not be deeply drawn—nuance is not a prime concern in such genre pieces—but they’re all damaged people, and the actors successfully get that across.  Garner, Brolin and Ehrenreich are especially successful in capturing the flaws—Justine is a woman desperate for affection and quick with a drink (her manner makes you wonderful whether she was an effective teacher), Archer is aware of his failings as a father and a businessman (a trait that makes him all the more intent on proving himself), and Paul knows he’s in trouble both personally and professionally.  Among the others Abrams is utterly convincing as the tent-dwelling junkie always in need of a fix and the money to secure one, and Madigan takes charge whenever she’s onscreen.

Like “Barbarian,” “Weapons” loses some of its punch down the home stretch despite the effort of Cregger and his colleagues to keep the energy level pulse-poundingly high.  But even though it ends up a bit winded, like some of its chief characters, it will certainly satisfy genre fans with its mixture of thrills, suspense and mystification.