Spike Lee ’s latest joint is, above all, a celebration. He fêtes New York in his first hometown film in a decade, and his longtime collaborator, Denzel Washington . He pays off his longterm admiration for Akira Kurosawa, in a loose remake of the Japanese director’s 1963 noir High And Low . Lee even decks out his hero’s base in the blue and orange of his beloved New York Knicks. For all the high stakes and desperate moments of this thrilling crime drama, its filmmaker is having the time of his life.

Not that that’s immediately obvious. We meet Washington’s David King in his Brooklyn penthouse, planning the biggest deal of his career alongside his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and earnest son Trey (Aubrey Joseph). King is pressured and fast-talking, taking another huge risk in a career

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