It’s been nearly 20 years since Spike Lee made a great movie. Maybe longer. He’s come close a couple of times–BlackKklansman is very good, and depending on who you ask, Da 5 Bloods has a place (my take: it’s highly overrated)–but Lee was at his best when he was an on-the-rise, angry filmmaker making gritty dramas and satires back in the 90s.

Highest 2 Lowest, the latest Spike Lee joint to star Denzel Washington, shows how tiring, and tired, the filmmaker has become. There’s nothing terrible about this remake of a 1963 Japanese film High and Low, and yet it’s hard to argue why anyone should go out of their way to spend more than two hours with this flat piece of entertainment.

Washington chews up dialogue and scenery as you’d expect, and Jeffrey Wright matches him step for step. The plot, about a kidnapping-for-ransom gone awry, presents compelling questions about what’s right and what’s necessary, and of course, coming from Lee, there’s some commentary on Black-on-Black violence and glorification of crime.

But, despite its title, Highest 2 Lowest ironically offers no highs or lows in terms of emotion, energy, or storytelling. It’s just a flat piece of filmmaking, elevated only slightly by the talent behind the camera and the actors in front of it. It’s good enough to keep watching, not good enough to give a damn about it. Lee cuts away at odd times–like when Washington’s David King first gets the phone call about his kidnapped son–and lingers too long on inconsequential moments. For a movie about a music mogul, it’s also strange how generic the score is; the soundtrack rings like they put in a temporary one for post-production and never swapped in the real deal before its official release.

As flaccid as the whole movie is, Highest 2 Lowest does maintain a certain level of inertia–I won’t go so far as to call it momentum–that keeps it tolerably watchable. But overall this drama feels like the type of movie Lee would have made 30 years ago, only then he would have punched you in the face while doing so. This one doesn’t even offer a slap.

Hell, maybe next year will be Lee’s year. Doubtful, but you never know.

Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.