Spike Lee's thriller noir, Highest 2 Lowest, is based on Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) and Ed McBain's King's Ransom (1959). Provenance is one of the subjects of the movie. The very last powerful confrontation between a rapper and kidnapper named Felon (ASAP Rocky) and David King aka King David (Denzel Washington) is between "old" (King's "discovery" at the movie's climax is accompanied by a Steinway) and "new" style. Jeffrey Wright who played the role of the black writer Thelonious "Monk" Ellison in American Fiction functions not only as a character but citation. If you recall Ellison adopts a faux prison rapper persona to succeed in the Cord Jefferson movie. However, the antinomy, the Gregorian chant between King and Felon, separated by a penitentiary's plexiglass divider is the movie's coup de grace. (Edit note: the range of Denzel Washington's performance is off the charts).
read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star
and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star
and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn
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