Film Review: Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee and Highest 2 Lowest: A Revelation

In my earlier, immature, less enlightened years, I didn’t get Spike Lee. I didn’t like the music. I didn’t like the heat. And then, at some point, I sort of forgot about him altogether.

Last year, though, I put together a film series on racial storytelling in America. We screened To Kill a Mockingbird, Mississippi Burning, In the Heat of the Night, and then left the final slot open for the public to choose. They picked Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. I wasn’t excited, but then I watched it again, all these years later, and found myself wondering who that earlier, “literate” version of me was, the one who couldn’t see its genius when it first came out.

And now here we are with Spike Lee’s latest film with Denzel Washington, Highest 2 Lowest. I’m telling you, do not miss it. Watch it with others. Then go to dinner somewhere far away before you talk about it. Give yourself space to breathe and think before you unpack it.

It’s brilliant. It’s bold. It’s shiny and chaotic and, above all, it’s relevant. Perhaps the most relevant film to come out in a time as confusing and disorienting as the one we’re living through.

A Different Spike

The cinematography is breathtaking. That opening scene in the apartment? Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes, the apartment is actually for sale, but I don’t have time to get into those details now.

From the very beginning, we know this is different. Spike Lee is filming in the white rich man’s world, not the neighborhood he grew up in. I don’t know where Spike lives now, but I’d like to know. He nails it.

The film is a reimagining of Kurosawa’s High and Low, which was itself based on Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom. The premise is layered but simple at its heart. There is a man who has climbed the mountain and made it to the top, only to discover that the view isn’t what he thought it would be, and he isn’t sure why he wanted to get there in the first place.

Denzel plays that man. And as far as I can remember, this might be the first time we’ve seen him embody a character like this, a man of color who came up through the hood, made it to the pinnacle of wealth and power, and now finds himself suffocating inside it.

Chaos Inside the Quiet

The film opens with a sense of disorder, and I think that’s where some reviewers are getting it wrong. I’ve heard people complain that the first half is too messy, too chaotic, but that’s the point. The chaos isn’t in the filmmaking. It’s inside Denzel’s character. Spike lets us sit inside his disorientation, the success, the isolation, the ache of wondering why happiness didn’t come with the climb.

The plot itself is deceptively simple. A wealthy man, already stretched financially and emotionally by the weight of his success, believes his son has been kidnapped. A ransom demand for $17 million arrives. Of course he’ll pay. But the twist? It isn’t his son who’s been taken. It’s his son’s best friend, the child of Denzel’s own best friend from his early poor days. The real struggle begins. Does he pay the ransom for a child who isn’t his?

We wrestle with him through that dilemma. Of course, in the end, he pays. And then the incompetent white police force, which Spike hits us hard with for their ineptitude, their racial blindness, and their prejudice, fails spectacularly. So Denzel and his friend take matters into their own hands, tracking down the kidnapper, a rapper who just wanted Denzel to notice him.

From there, the film evolves into something close to a modern fairytale. Denzel rediscovers himself, his purpose, his grounding. In choosing to do the right thing, he finds his way back to who he is.

Mirrors Everywhere

And yet, this isn’t just a story about a kidnapping. Spike uses every frame, every object, every sound, every silence, to hold up a mirror to us. The chaos in Denzel’s life echoes the chaos in our own society. The billionaire oligarchs, the fractured systems, the growing gaps between wealth and morality, it’s all there, humming beneath the surface. Spike doesn’t have to say it outright. You feel it.

Denzel’s performance is extraordinary. You can see the struggle in every gesture, every pause. And I wonder if some of that came from him personally. He’s been open about his sobriety, ten years now, and admitted to fifteen years before that spent drinking daily, chasing the wrong gods, losing his way spiritually. Watching him here, I couldn’t help but think that maybe this role mirrored pieces of his own journey back to center.

His wife in the film is excellent, restrained but potent. Yet for me, it’s Spike’s honesty, his camera, and his writing that elevate this into a masterpiece. Every backdrop, the paintings, the jewelry, the skyline, isn’t just scenery; it’s dialogue. It speaks. It matters.

The Soundtrack and the Shock

A lot of people have criticized the music, but I think that’s missing the point. Spike has layered this film with music from wildly different genres, many of which feel foreign to his past work. That’s exactly why some viewers resist it. There is so much variety that no matter what your personal taste is, at some point you’ll be uncomfortable. And maybe that’s the brilliance of it. He wants you unsettled. He wants you to feel that clash, that friction, that dissonance between the world his character inhabits and the one inside his mind.

Sometimes the music demands to be heard over the dialogue, and you want to fight it. But you can’t ignore it. That’s the impact he’s going for. It’s not meant to please. It’s meant to provoke.

The opening credits set the tone. "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" from Oklahoma! plays as the early skyline of New York City glides past, clean, slick, rich, polished. And I couldn’t help but stop and think, I never imagined Spike Lee knowing the music of Oklahoma!, let alone putting it front and center as the opening of his film. For a moment, you wonder if you’ve wandered into the wrong theater. But that’s Spike’s genius. He sets you up, disorients you, and lands you squarely in a penthouse high above Manhattan, where the story truly begins.

And then there’s the ending. A young ingénue, a rising Black artist, sings "Highest 2 Lowest." It’s not just a closing song. It’s a statement, a release, a promise. The journey comes full circle, from Oklahoma!’s cheerful dawn to the raw honesty of this final note.

The Scene I Can’t Shake

There’s one scene that gutted me. Denzel, furious but loving, pushes his face close to his son’s, demanding respect. The tension is unbearable, rage and tenderness tangled together. His son, calm but firm, whispers, “Yes, sir.” And then, as Denzel turns to leave, his son says quietly, “You’re a very powerful man. But you have no soul.” I might have the word wrong, but that’s the essence, and it lands like a punch.

Moments like this are everywhere in the film. Every character around Denzel holds up a mirror to him, forcing him and us to reckon with who we are and who we’ve become.

Seeing What I Couldn’t Before

I’ve never struggled with Spielberg. I’ve always thought of him as a master storyteller. But watching Spike Lee now, with the distance and maturity I didn’t have twenty years ago, I realize how small the box was that I used to live in.

We tend to gravitate toward art that reflects ourselves back to us, that feels safe and familiar. But films like this, films that come from a culture, a perspective, an experience different from our own, are essential. They stretch us. They make us bigger. They remind us how much we miss when we only consume mirrors of our own lives.

Spike Lee has opened doors for me into lives I haven’t lived and experiences I might never have understood otherwise. That exposure is critical. It is how I grow. It is how I make my life larger than the small box I was born into.

Spike Lee, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And no, I don’t think I’ve arrived yet. But I want to follow wherever you take me, into every neighborhood, every story, every soundscape.