Few working directors have earned the status where every new film they make is a must-see. Spike Lee is one of those directors.
This is doubly true when he partners with his long-time muse, Denzel Washington. When the news of Spike Lee’s adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, cinema fans were pretty excited.
Highest 2 Lowest is an accurate title because it perfectly captures the emotional journey one goes on with this film. Starting at the highest peak of excitement and gradually descending to the lowest point: letdown.
Highest 2 Lowest features a star-studded cast, including Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, and rapper A$AP Rocky. Washington plays David King, the founder of Stackin’ Hits Records.
Early on, we find out that King sold a majority stake in the label but plans to raise the capital required to buy it back. He uses everything possible, including his lavish New York City penthouse, as collateral.
The entire movie swings when a kidnapper contacts him, saying they abducted his son, Trey. What follows is a sufficiently tense ransom movie with some twists and turns, but it lacks any real thrills or suspense.
There’s a major mix-up with the kidnapper’s plan that thrusts King and his family into a moral conundrum that should not be a conundrum at all.
On its surface, the premise of this movie is one that should work.
However, the execution was deeply flawed. With the exception of a powerful performance by Jeffrey Wright, there is not much about Highest 2 Lowest that worked.
Everything from the script to the use of color to the cinematography felt like a betrayal of what makes Spike great.
The most jarring and disappointing element of Highest 2 Lowest was the editing. Editing has always been a staple of Spike’s films, as it drives the story, provides pace, and helps the audience know what to focus on while watching.
The signature editing style of Spike’s filmography is the result of decades of collaboration with legendary editor Barry Alexander Brown. This Apple Original Film used Brown but also had a second editor, Allyson C. Johnson.
Johnson’s work on Apple’s The Mosquito Coast was pretty good, but it seems like this may be the case of too many cooks in the kitchen. A few pivotal scenes were ruined due to disjointed editing.
There is a scene late in the film where King is having a tense discussion with a business associate about buying back Stackin’ Hits, where it felt like a high school film student edited the conversation.
The way this film looked completely betrayed its tone. It felt like a black and white film that was colorized while that technology was still in its infancy and the artists were still working out the kinks.
This classic cinema look and feel could have worked on a different movie, but Highest 2 Lowest was too modern and was trying to be too slick, so it just ended up being more confusing than anything.
Photo Credit: Apple TV+Another disappointing aspect of this movie was Denzel's performance. It’s Denzel Washington, so there was definitely some magic there, but overall, the performance was flat. It did not do much to make the audience care about him.
His character was wrestling with a decision that few people could ever even imagine, the weight of which would crush most people, but it never felt heavy.
The movie itself was built upon the notion that the audience went through the harrowing ordeal of making this decision with Denzel’s character. However, Denzel never seemed too stressed, and the outcome never felt in jeopardy.
A$AP Rocky was the perfect choice for the role of Young Felon, but the character lacked depth and seemed to be based on a sixty-eight-year-old man’s stereotype of what an aspiring hip hop artist in 2025 should look like. Rocky handled himself well, though, and should have a good acting career ahead of him if he wants it.
The supporting cast also felt quite random at times. It felt like all of the law enforcement characters only read their own lines and didn’t know what else was happening in this film. Their behavior was confusing and felt quite removed from how police officers would act in that situation.
There’s a particular scene where a witness provides a slam dunk clue as to who the kidnapper was. The police simply ignored this piece of information and said, “let us do our jobs.”
The most absurd thing about the movie’s supporting cast was Dean Winters, famous for playing Mayhem in the Allstate commercials. It felt like Winters completely misunderstood the tone and point of this film. At some point, I wish Spike had told him it wasn’t a buddy cop movie.
Overall, I would say that Highest 2 Lowest had the classic half-baked feel that a lot of streaming platform originals suffer from.
The bones of a good story are in there, but the script needed several more rounds of revisions. The color correction made it feel cartoonish at times.
The editing felt like watching a race car movie at all the wrong times and lacked the cohesiveness that Barry Alexander Brown usually brings to Spike’s movies.
Featured image: Apple TV+
