Record executive David King (Denzel Washington) is on the verge of a risky business proposition to buy back controlling interest in the music company he founded when he receives a call from a kidnapper saying his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), has been taken. The kidnapper demands $17.5 million as a ransom, which will wipe out all of King's assets, but it's a small price to get his son back alive and unharmed. Then Trey walks through the door. The kidnapper had accidentally grabbed Trey's best friend, Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of the King family chauffeur, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). Suddenly, King finds himself in a moral quandary. He was willing to risk the family fortune for his son, but would he risk his family's future for a friend's?
It feels almost sacrilegious to say, but Spike Lee actually improves upon the original in that I stayed interested in this film all the way through. Kurosawa's version relied so heavily on the internal tension that it almost forgot to have any external. Lee's version is more balanced.
My only other takeaway was Man, he really loves New York City. Not a new thought but one that was reinforced over and over.
It's streaming on AppleTV.
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