Movies

Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington and directed by Spike Lee
Trailer: A24

Highest 2 Lowest
Directed by Spike Lee
Rated R
Heard 15 August 2025
#Highest2Lowest

Highest 2 Lowest sinks low before reaching exhilarating heights.

The Shoemaker

In master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963, based on Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom), the first 10 minutes center around a group of men sitting in a living room talking about shoes. Women’s shoes. And it’s intense.

The men run a shoe company, so their conversation is nothing perverse. But their discussions focus on the ages-old corporate battle between quality and profit. And there’s a desire to move the company forward and grow profits by focusing on lower-quality materials. That rubs the founder the wrong way. He’s seen the writing on the wall, and he’s mortgaged everything he’s got to buy a controlling share of the company. He’s incredibly stressed by the financial strain he’s putting his family through.

He's already at his breaking point when a sinister caller notifies him his son’s been kidnapped. Pony up several million yen or his son dies.

The tension ratchets up even further.

But there’s a mix-up. The captors have the wrong boy.

With his own son safe, the burden then falls on the man to determine if he should pay the ransom for the return of a colleague’s son.

The Hitmaker

With Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee has taken Kurosawa’s movie and moved it from Tokyo to modern-day New York City, retooling the storyline to revolve around a record label, Stackin’ Hits, that’s finding those hits harder and harder to come by.

Lee takes the material and turns it into a masterful statement about culture, media, creativity and the "attention economy" that fuels modern flash-in-the-pan concepts like social media "influencers."

But before those lofty narrative and thematic heights are reached, Lee starts low. As in a sinking feeling kind of low. As in, did Spike Lee just make a stinker kind of low.

The setup in Highest 2 Lowest is the same as before. The problem with the opening of Lee’s version is there’s no tension. The label’s creator, David King, wants to buy it out and take it back to its roots. As Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) did in the original, he’s leveraged everything he’s got. But "King David" doesn’t seem the least bit stressed or concerned. Not a drop of sweat is to be seen as he discusses his plans with his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera, Billions). For her part, Pam could throw a little more drama, bring a little more emotion, as well.

Never mind David King is played by the always cool under pressure Denzel Washington, reteaming with Lee for the first time since the terrific Inside Man 19 years ago.

Things are more interesting when it comes to Paul Christopher, the father of the son who’s mistaken for David’s. Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction) plays the character as a devout Muslim, which is a nice spin on the way so many of the same mannerisms Wright employs are reflected in the original Japanese character, but for entirely different reasons. Adding some edge, Paul is treated with suspicion by the investigators, but some of his actions don’t help his own case of innocence.

Tonal Dissonance

David King is described as having the best ears in the music business, a talent which drove Stackin’ Hits to great heights. But his son would add he also has the coldest heart.

There’s something off key with just about everything in the opening act of Highest 2 Lowest. There’s no tension, no real, palpable sense of danger, the kind of tension that permeated even shoe talk in High and Low has gone missing.

And the relationships don’t quite jibe. Between husband and wife, between label maker and colleague, between father and investigators. Even between Howard Drossin’s tone-deaf film score and the on-screen action.

So, let’s skip the first act and scooch right into the second half.

Move past the kidnapping, the mix-up and the resolution of the mix-up.

There’s the business about a ransom of $17.5 million in Swiss francs stuffed in a black backpack and dropped between cars on an elevated portion of the subway.

This is when Highest 2 Lowest reveals itself as a great Spike Lee joint.

Lee piles on all his New York favorites. The Yankees. The Bronx. The absolute abhorrence of the Red Sox and Boston (there’s even a great poster on the subway: "We love that hatred is not tolerated. (Red Sox not included.)" As the focus shifts from kidnapping to ransom, the pace ticks up and the emotions start to gel into something powerful.

David King gets to the bottom of who’s been tormenting his extended family and that subway ride is set against a backdrop celebrating Puerto Rico with cameos by Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos and the great Eddie Palmieri, who died only a week ago.

Second Chances

It’s hard to think of another movie which featured a first half that can be easily, succinctly described as "bad" only to have the second half be so fantastic, it makes up for all the movie’s earlier sins.

Lee opened Inside Man with A.R. Rahman’s hot and spicy Chaiyya Chaiyya and it worked well. It set a crafty tone – and it was a creative choice he made on some sort of bet. Highest 2 Lowest sets the opening credits against Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ from Oklahoma. It simply doesn’t work.

Ironically, the power of this second half derives from music. Not necessarily the music in the movie, but the business of music, what it represents and what it does in society.

Enter A$AP Rocky in a solid performance as Yung Felon, the mastermind behind the kidnapping plot.

This is when things turn really playful in this release from Apple, A24 and Kurosawa Production. The young felon’s apartment is at 333 Trinity Avenue and, more specifically, he lives in apartment A 24.

Culture Club

It’s stunning where Lee goes with the concept. It’s a takedown of that "attention economy" which lifts up dubious talents and brands know-nothings as "influencers." While Yung Felon swears up an F-bomb laced storm of profanity and vulgar music videos, King David wants to hit rewind and go back to making music that matters, that tells meaningful stories and lifts people up.

Beyond that, Lee takes a swipe at a viral sentiment that’s sinking society, one which reveres criminal conduct. Outside the courtside, protestors demand Yung Felon be set free. On the flip side, King David is dissatisfied with the 25 years the crook is set to serve.

And going further, there’s a terrific face-off between David and the felon rapper, the two separated by glass, as David visits Yung Felon in prison. It’s there second such encounter, following a remarkable standoff in Yug Felon’s low-rent excuse for a music studio.

This King David preaches a simple truth: "In order to have followers, you need to lead." And that notion ties back to a discussion he has with his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph, Cloak & Dagger), about how much time he spends on his phone. (And, for that matter, the media categorizes Trey as a "nepo baby.")

He also challenges the trashy tuff persona Yung Felon portrays, questioning his need to refer to the mother of his child as a bitch. None of this seems to resonant with Yung Felon and part of the tragedy of his story is he’s spent so much of his life dreaming about meeting King David and working with him; the two of them, he fantasizes, are pumped and primed for making millions of dollars together. But David’s too cool for that nonsense, too seasoned. The felon and the hitmaker are playing to totally different wavelengths across the board.

Like Kingo Gondo the shoemaker, David King laments the rise of artificial intelligence and the use of machines and computers to manufacture cheap music.

Great stuff. Sharp dialogue. Meaningful dialogue as David sets it straight about doing good work and being a good person.

Yeah. Doing the right thing.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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