Review: The uneven ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ lives up to its title
2025 / Dir. Spike Lee
☆ 3.5/5
In Spike Lee’s inconsistent reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s classic High and Low, Denzel Washington stars as David King, an aging record executive facing a $17.5-million moral dilemma.
The first half closely follows the Kurosawa original in plot, with “King” David, as he was known earlier in his career, trying to save his company from being sold for scrap and farmed out for AI-music generation. After he believes his son has been kidnapped, he’s ready to put that dream to rest and put up the $17.5 million demanded by the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky). When it’s revealed the kidnapper instead grabbed the son of his driver and longtime friend, Paul (Jeffrey Wright), he debates whether the other boy is worth sacrificing his company over.
There’s not a lot to enjoy in the first half. The acting feels like a TV movie (remember those?), and there’s this overbearing, cloying “old Hollywood” score that feels very out of place and rarely quiets down. The film also has some jittery Godard-style jump cuts that appear here and there, which gives you the impression that even Spike Lee wants to speed ahead to the “good stuff” in the second half.
Perhaps that’s by design. Kurosawa’s original focused on Japanese post-war economic anxiety: the promise of a country’s rebirth taken down by inequality. The financial disparity between David’s penthouse and the kidnapper’s later location is certainly apparent, but Highest 2 Lowest also wants to show how David’s life in the penthouse has estranged him from his previous love of music, his family, and his culture. Too bad the genuinely provoking questions it asks have to be presented in such a stiff and muddled way.
The second half feels like the movie Spike Lee actually wants to make, starting with a thrilling sequence where David must deliver the ransom money to the kidnapper. The film adopts a grainy ‘70s-style film look, and Lee cuts between the chaos of David navigating a subway train full of Boston-hating sports fans and the late Eddie Palmieri’s band playing at a Puerto Rican Pride street festival.
Likewise, the decision to focus more on street justice in the second half following the ransom exchange, rather than following the police like in Kurosawa’s original, feels fresh. Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright bounce off each other as they search for the kidnapper through dingy apartments and subterranean recording studios. Without spoiling anything, when Washington and A$AP Rocky finally share screentime after verbally sparring over the phone throughout the movie, it feels like two titans colliding—with Rocky holding his own against the legendary Washington.
Highest 2 Lowest lives up to its title with an uneven experience taking us from a dull first half to an electrifying second. If that doesn’t sway you to see this on the big screen during its very short theatrical run, Highest 2 Lowest will show up on Apple TV+ on September 5, where it’s definitely worth watching compared to most of the unremarkable streaming movies getting made these days.
Watch if you like: Spike Lee movies, multiple appearances from cast members of The Wire, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low but always wished it ended in a climactic rap battle, and random five-second Ice Spice cameos.