A re-working of Akira Kurosawa’s masterly High and Low, which itself came from the 1959 Ed McBain pulp novel King’s Ransom, this is an absolute mess. Despite forceful performances from Washington, Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky, a woeful, unintentionally hilarious script entirely destabilises the film. Let’s just say if Kurosawa’s work is the highest, Lee’s is the lowest.
Except that, as it turns out, that’s not the case. The kidnappers snatched the wrong boy, taking Kyle, the son of David’s long-time friend and chauffeur, Paul (Wright). The cash demand is extortionate: $17.5 million, in 1000 Swiss Franc notes.
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Then comes the money drop on the New York subway, as the head kidnapper (Rocky) sends King on a wild goose chase. There are moments of excitement here, but also some terrible choices by Lee.
As King makes his way through the subway train, he’s also swamped by baseball fans screaming “Boston sucks”, with one particularly enthusiastic ringleader even yelling to camera.
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With Washington looking like he’s in another instalment of The Equalizer, there are plenty of other moments that will make you either scratch your head, double take or laugh incredulously.
Another sequence sees King in his office, wailing to the pictures on his walls of music gods Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Stevie Wonder, asking “What would you do?”
Yet this is a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It barely works as a thriller. And nor does it really have anything interesting to say about social media or the music industry.
The film is so schizophrenic, it even finishes with a musical number. Well, why not? This is the sort of film that throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Most of it doesn’t.
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