The New Old Spike Lee

Heaven and Hell ( Highest 2 Lowest in the original) is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film, Heaven and Hell , based on a novel by Ed McBain, set in a fictional city inspired by New York. Spike Lee's work returns the original story to its original source—the novel, set in a fictional city inspired by New York—but distances itself from the notion of class struggle that existed in Kurosawa's film. Indeed, Heaven and Hell reflects the ideas of someone established in a different social class in New York. This is somewhat novel in the cinema of the director, whose birthplace, home, and inspiration lie in that city.

David King (Denzel Washington) has risen in the world as the founder of a successful Black music label, with fifty Grammys under his belt and a philosophy of embracing jazz, soul, and R&B and ignoring hip-hop. King deliberately rejects street music and seeks something closer to his ambition, alongside the luxurious lifestyle he lives, which includes a penthouse in DUMBO (an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), the Brooklyn neighborhood—but not the Brooklyn of other Spike Lee films. Here, King sees the city from above.

[the trailer for “Heaven and Hell”:]

His son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), wants to be a basketball star. He trains with Rick Fox—who plays him—and things are set up for him to be a nepo baby . The most palpable element in the first third of Heaven and Hell is that Spike Lee offers no social commentary on David King's way of life. In part, this hits you like a frontal shock while watching the film: you spend part of the introduction waiting for Lee to contradict the protagonist's philosophy, but that doesn't happen. Eventually, we lose hope: not in the director, but in our own intentions regarding what we anticipate as a Spike Lee film.