From Heaven to Hell: Denzel Washington Never Ends (***)

Spike Lee, in some cases, is frightening. This is one of them. There's a facet of his filmography that provokes a certain panic. And it has nothing to do with his more identifiable vindictive, militant, confrontation-loving style, which is always pleasing, but rather with the ease with which he deconstructs those classics we're told in school are untouchable. In Chi-Raq, he adapted Aristophanes' Lysistrata and took pride in his particular interpretation of the women's sex strike. And in Pass Over, he offered his own version of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot on the streets of modern Chicago. In both cases, he emerged happy and very successful. In this same vein, he takes Akira Kurosawa's The Heathen , and turns one of the most peculiar and dark thrillers in the history of cinema into a diversion of kidnappings, lost money, music (lots of music) and a superb Denzel Washington, in what is the fifth collaboration with the director, who raps and with whom it is impossible not to fall in love.

To put things in perspective and refresh your memory, we're faced with the dilemma of a wealthy businessman whose son is allegedly kidnapped by a gang of thugs. Or so it seems at first. Our hero, who in the original film was the gigantic Toshirô Mifune and in this one the no less gigantic Washington, hesitates: pay the ransom, save the victim, and go bankrupt, or not. That is, he doesn't pay and lets the kid die (actually, there's been a mix-up. We won't say which one), but he keeps the money he needs to pay off one of those debts that, if not paid, leave you dead. The biggest difference between the two, apart from almost everything (the two-act structure is still vaguely preserved), is the setting. This time, he's a major music producer (of black music, of course), and it's around this art form, which is also a business and even a political manifesto, that everything revolves.

From Heaven to Hell moves across the screen with a catchy, playful, joking, and always iconoclastic rhythm that, let's face it, isn't easy to adapt to at first. Prejudices are many (always), and until you realize all the things we miss out on precisely because of those prejudices, it's hard to get into. But once you overcome the barrier of your own stupidity, everything flows. And that's when Lee's ideal emerges fully and brilliantly, when the vindication of authentic Black music counters the most commercial rap, when the hero understands his role as a service to the community, and when New York is once again described with as much tenderness as cruelty. And that's when Lee allows himself, from time to time, to have the actors look at the camera for no reason. Or for those same actors to hug twice in the same sequence simply by depicting the same action from two different angles. Or for Denzel Washington himself to rap and do it like no one else has before. It's Lee.

The result is one of those films that revel in its mistakes because it's aware of them and because it empowers them; a film that, truly, is a joint effort . It's Lee. It's free. It's fun. And it features a Denzel Washington who never ends.

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Director : Spike Lee. Starring : Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, ASAP Rocky. Running time : 133 minutes. Nationality : United States.

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