Highest 2 Lowest
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington are reunited on an engrossing morality tale set in the world of music and compromise.
High on music: Denzel and the East River
Image courtesy of A24 Films/Apple TV+.
Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest is many things, all of them good. The director, with twenty-four features to his name, has reached a point in his career where he has jettisoned the self-conscious without losing the nerve to exploit his characteristic strengths. Spike’s first collaboration with Denzel Washington, Mo’ Better Blues, back in 1990, explored the world of jazz and now they both return to the milieu – music – albeit on an entirely different level. Yet the psyche of music remains at the heart of the protagonist, originally the jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam, now the music mogul David King – aka ‘King David.’ Both films also deal with friendship, loyalty and deliverance. Besides being a character study and a commentary on the music scene today (where online clicks have replaced the metronome of the soul), Highest 2 Lowest is a moral fable, a gripping crime thriller and a valentine to New York. In future editions of New York travel guides, this will be cited as one of the great films about the city, up there with Taxi Driver, Manhattan and West Side Story (both versions).
Like Woody Allen’s Manhattan, the film opens with a series of iconic landmarks, but set not to George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ but to Norm Lewis belting out ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’. As the camera zooms in on a balcony of Brooklyn’s striking Olympia Dumbo building, Denzel’s David King shouts out, “It’s a beautiful day!” He’s a self-made man, blessed with a beautiful wife (Ilfenesh Hadera) and a smart kid, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), the nickname “The Best Ears in the Business”, a record company that boasts fifty Grammy winners and a penthouse overlooking the southern tip of Manhattan. He’s now on the verge of regaining majority interest of his own company, if only he can shuffle the numbers right, which might mean his wife’s annual $500k donation to charity could be in jeopardy. It seems that however much money a person has, it’s never quite enough, and David King’s priorities are thrown into sharp relief when his son is kidnapped and a ransom of $17.5m is demanded.
In spite of the film’s New York pulse, Highest 2 Lowest is actually a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Japanese drama High and Low, itself an adaptation of Ed McBain's 1959 novel King's Ransom. But then good stories can withstand countless retellings and the core of this moral dilemma is a Hydra of many heads. What price compromise? “It’s just fucking money!” reasons Trey, but then it’s not his fucking money…
With its old-fashioned sweep, the film is strong enough to withstand an occasionally intrusive score from Howard Drossin, its timbre eventually becoming as part-and-parcel of the film as was Bernard Herrmann’s score to Taxi Driver. And Spike Lee’s love of New York oozes from every frame as his movie wraps itself around the whole city, from its subway stations to its sumptuous high-rises. While many films populate the famous sidewalks, this seems to tap into the very bloodstream of the city. This is cinema in its purest form, visually, emotionally and musically, and it’s gripping stuff. And, at 68-years of age, Spike Lee has reached a maturity where he knows how to conclude on a moment of quiet, of intimacy even, of hope.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, ASAP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Aubrey Joseph, Elijah Wright, Michael Potts, Wendell Pierce, Princess Nokia, Isis 'Ice Spice' Gaston, Frederick Weller, Nicholas Turturro, Andy McQueen, Aiyana-Lee, Rick Fox, Anthony Ramos, Rosie Perez, Eddie Palmieri.
Dir Spike Lee, Pro Todd Black and Jason Michael Berman, Ex Pro Spike Lee, Screenplay Alan Fox, adapted from the 1959 novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, Ph Matthew Libatique, Pro Des Mark Friedberg, Ed Barry Alexander Brown and Allyson C. Johnson, Music Howard Drossin, Costumes Francine Jamison-Tanchuck.
A24/Apple Studios/Escape Artists/Mandalay Pictures/40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks-A24 Films/Apple TV+.
133 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 5 September 2025. Cert. 15.
