| Over the course of his filmmaking career, there are a few things about Spike Lee that are evident: he’s proud of his roots, and he loves New York sports teams, music and Denzel Washington. All of which are not just present in, but pivotal to, his newest film Highest 2 Lowest. This is a remake of the Japanese film High and Low, but it’s also distinctly a Spike Lee joint. He made it entirely his own with a relevant spin and it stands up as one of the best of his career. | | 2025
Directed by: Spike Lee
Screenplay by: Alan Fox, Based on:
the novel by Ed Bains, film by Akira Kurasawa
Starring: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright
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David King (Denzel Washington) is a rich, successful music mogul, known for having the best ears in the business. Now let’s take a moment to appreciate the name. First there is the David vs Goliath reference: this is a guy who went from the streets with nothing and built his own record label from scratch becoming the most important person in the New York music industry. And then there is either a royalty reference, or as I prefer, a Martin Luther King Jr. reference: David is a guy known for helping to lift up fellow African Americans, he’s philanthropic and waxes spiritually with religious quotes.
The beginning has a fairy tale quality to it. The characters are all filmed up high in their penthouse suite, or at the top of a spiral staircase. The sky is bright blue with wispy clouds floating past, life is good, with an upbeat score to match.
Quickly though we get to the main plot: David’s teenage son has been kidnapped and held for ransom. After one main twist which I don’t want to spoil, David finds himself in a high-stakes moral dilemma. The other characters, and myself included, are all pleading with him to do the right thing. While it seems like an easy decision to a lot of us in the audience, it’s easy to see how it would be a difficult decision to someone like him, especially with the right thing coming at a high cost, and some ramifications are not easily foreseen.
There are a few things that I love about this kidnapping plot. First, he immediately called the police. In so many movies, the main characters hear the kidnappers say don’t call the police and then they don’t, and things inevitably go worse. Calling the police seems like the more reasonable first approach (especially when you’re rich and the police are more likely to help you). The bulk of the movie isn’t just making the decision (remember the moral dilemma), but there’s still significant action and more evolution to the kidnapping.
The action of the kidnapping also leads to one of Spike Lee’s best directed scenes of his career: David and the police on a subway full of New York Yankees fans, a Puerto Rican music and street festival filling the air below and then other cops chasing the would-be kidnappers through all of that. It is frenetic, suspenseful, creative filmmaking at its finest.
To be clear this is a very divisive movie, so let’s address some of the criticisms. The score is hated. At the beginning, it’s interesting and lends to the fairy tale atmosphere which is in direct contradiction to the crime drama that the movie is about to become. Through the middle of the movie it is at best confusing, outright distracting, as it absolutely does not fit the crime drama that the movie currently is. While I can’t say I like it, I do think I understand it. But then we get to the last act of the movie, something that combines all of themes that are present in the main character, and there’s a rhythm to the score as David is basically deciding what direction the rest of his life, and other peoples’ lives, are going to go that really fits. The score in this part is a direct evolution from the score in the earlier scenes and it suddenly fits and really helps with the pacing of the movie.
The next big criticism is that most of the characters have an altruism that their real life counter-parts would not have. This is true, and it’s also a good thing. Ultimately, not all people are pure evil, and I think we can all use a movie which takes a reflection of current society but gives it a silver lining. Note that fairy tale quality again.
Thanks to Denzel Washington especially, but also just how Spike Lee set this movie up, it’s easy to get into, and then you just have to let it take you on a ride through a moral dilemma, a kidnapping that could turn out any number of ways, and ultimately to a story about music and hope.
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