What’s most striking about director Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” is that its supposedly central ethical quandary is shockingly inert.

Fortunately for Lee, his updating of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 “High and Low” finally starts to soar when it departs the furthest from Kurosawa’s tale.

As Rory Doherty wrote for the A.V. Club, there is no good reason why the first hour of “Highest 2 Lowest” should play out as formally as it does, right down to its generically ostentatious cinematography and blandly urbane background score.

No, the incidental piano music is not composed by Howard Shore, but it might as well be.

Likewise, it’s difficult to sympathize with Denzel Washington’s swaggering record executive when he realizes that kidnappers have abducted not his own son, but that of his loyal chauffeur, played by Jeffrey Wright, who makes it painfully easy for us to empathize with his aggrievement.

The police are far less deferential toward the understandable trauma of Wright’s chauffeur than they are toward Washington’s music mogul, even after they’d already mistakenly treated the chauffeur as a potential suspect in the kidnapping.

Worse yet, while Washington’s record exec had been fully willing to fork over the funds for his own son’s ransom, the fact that he’s embroiled in a high-risk bid to buy back the music label he founded makes him initially reluctant to make the same financial sacrifice for his friend’s son.

There’s almost no drama to this moral dilemma, because everyone from the mogul’s son to his business partner treats his temporary disinclination to pay as simply wrong.

It’s such a one-sided debate that we see the ultra-masculine Denzel Washington failing to intimidate his character’s son out of his casual disrespect for the early stance.

Once Washington’s exec agrees to pay the ransom, though, Lee at last kicks this film into high gear, starting with an engaging ransom money dropoff sequence that cross-cuts exquisitely with New York City’s lively Puerto Rican Day Parade, whose outdoor concert echoes the dance hall in Kurosawa’s “High and Low.”

In the midst of “Law & Order” veteran Dean Winters again playing a hilariously ill-tempered and unfit cop, we’re treated to an appearance by pianist and bandleader Eddie Palmieri. He died earlier this month and this has to have been one of his final performances.

Both Lee and Kurosawa contrast their protagonists gaining folk hero status in the media with those businessmen’s creditors demanding repayments of money no longer in their possession. 

But while Kurosawa explores the police’s manipulations of the media through the release of true and false stories, Lee taps into his protagonist’s talent as a music producer to spot a clue that leads him to the kidnapper, played by real-life rapper A$AP Rocky (born Rakim Mayers).

The confrontation scenes between Washington and Mayers are at once playful and profound. Verbal sparring spins out into diegetic freestyle rap lyrics and the true conflict at the heart of “Highest 2 Lowest” is made explicit, between the older and younger generations of Black music.

Even as the older man seeks literal and figurative payback from the younger man, the older man also understands where the younger man is coming from, enough to keep me guessing until the very end about how their fraught relationship would resolve itself.

For a dude who turned 70 last December, Denzel is credibly nimble in spouting what sound convincingly like improvised verses.

And for as aloof and closed-off as he comes across at the outset of this film, it’s nice to see him demonstrate insights into musical artists that led to his character’s successes in the industry.

I was ultimately able to forgive some of this film’s first-reel sluggishness and seemingly poor storytelling choices, due to the denouement that the callousness of Washington’s character came from him drifting away from his more heartfelt reasons for making music.

To be fair, this is both contrasted and underscored when we see that he’s retained his artistic principles in the face of corporatization, social media and AI influence.

If Washington wasn’t having the time of his life in this role, then he’s an even better actor than I thought. He’s continually letting fly with small, puckish gestures that are clearly animated by the “play” part of acting.

Meanwhile, Wright continues to demonstrate his peerless talent at portraying bone-deep disgruntlement and disillusionment, with a heavy-lidded brow and a bearded scowl whose furrowed lines read like a road map of weary resignation.

If you can resist the temptation to check your watch during the first hour of this 133-minute film, “Highest 2 Lowest” is worth watching, but it’s also improved by a follow-up viewing of “High and Low.”