As Long as We Live, It's You and Me Baby: On Spike Lee’s Music Biz Thriller Highest 2 Lowest

HIGHEST TO LOWEST 

(Spike Lee, 2025, USA, 133 minutes) 

Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee's idiosyncratic reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 High and Low, is the kind of overstuffed film a late-in-life director makes when they're still bursting with energy and ideas even as dozens, if not hundreds, of younger guns are nipping at their heels. 

Might as well remake a favorite film, reunite with a favorite actor, shoot on location in a favorite city, and throw all your favorite stuff--Toni Morrison, Jean-Michel Basquiat--at the screen. After all, you've earned it. 

That isn't to say it's nostalgic. Despite the 62-year-old source material and the references to an elder's past glories–from gold records to magazine covers–it's very much about today, and Lee has decidedly mixed feelings about that. Though he has shifted the business from ladies footwear to music, the allusions to the movie business aren't hard to miss, since both have been transformed by social media, streaming, and digital technology. 

Left: Toshirô Mifune and Kyôko Kagawa in High and Low

To be sure, 68-year-old Lee has embraced all of these things, but that doesn't mean he isn't skeptical, and who can blame him when it comes to AI, which merits a few mentions–it's helpful when the cops are trying to identify the voice of a kidnapper, but it's no replacement for the flesh-and-blood artists music mogul David King (70-year-old Denzel Washington in his fifth go-round with the director since 1990's Mo' Better Blues) signed in his younger years.

If King was a different kind of cat, he would have retired to live out his days with his glamorous wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera, who recalls Lee's wife, Tonya Lewis Lee), in their dee-luxe apartment in the sky, but he's been hustling for so long, he doesn't know how to quit. If there's one characteristic that unites the different versions of the character, starting with the blond, broad-shouldered shoe magnate in Ed McBain's 1959 novel, King's Ransom, it's that they came from nothing, worked hard, and made it to the top. 

Though Kurosawa set the story in Yokohama, Lee brought it back to McBain's New York, except he opts for the city over the suburbs--King's Brooklyn penthouse is spectacular--and begins with the news that he needs to come up with a staggering amount of cash fast lest he get sidelined at the record label he made legendary. He may be rich, but it's more than he can afford, so he decides to roll the dice with everything he has. Pam, with her designer wardrobe and diamond-encrusted jewelry, is less than thrilled. 

Then, King gets a call that his teenaged son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), has been kidnapped. To bring him home, he needs to pay 17.5 million in Swiss Francs. He'll do anything for his only son, but when he discovers that the kidnapper mistakenly abducted his chauffeur's son, Kyle (Elijah Wright), he balks, even though he's Trey's best friend, and even though Paul (Elijah's father, Jeffrey Wright, who first caught my attention in 1996's Basquiat), a Muslim ex-con, is as much a surrogate relative as a trusted employee. 

It causes a rift in the family with mother and son united against the father until he finally relents. Up until that point, I had my doubts about this film, which is too static in its early stages. King and Paul, who trade rhymes whenever they go for a ride, are terrific together, but too often Pam comes across as shallow and humorless. Lee and Hadera have worked together before, starting with his 2013 Oldboy remake, and I quite enjoyed her chemistry with Forest Whitaker on Godfather of Harlem, but a looser, warmer presence would have been ideal (Hadera is also 30 years younger than Denzel, though Alan Fox's screenplay suggests they're the same age). 

Once King and the anonymous kidnapper–Surprise! It's A$AP Rocky–come to an agreement about the ransom drop, which will take place at some to-be-determined stop during a subway ride, Lee lets his freak flag fly, and Highest 2 Lowest finally takes flight, not least because it takes place during an exuberant Puerto Rican Day Parade and just after a Yankees/Red Sox game. 

Left: Spike and Nick Turturro's brother, John, at a Knicks/Bulls game in 2013.

Prior to the game, the film gets in a few jabs at Boston, one involving former Celtic forward Rick Fox, who plays a high school basketball coach, but once King gets on the train, the Yankees fans who follow in his wake go absolutely and hilariously apeshit. Their ringleader: longtime Lee associate Nicholas Turturro (another Lee associate, Rosie Perez, appears as herself during the Puerto Rican Day sequence). 

In a move that recalls Clint Eastwood's Play Misty for Me, which incorporates footage from the Monterey Jazz Festival, editors Barry Alexander Brown and Allyson C. Johnson cut repeatedly from the ransom drop, which involves black-clad motorcyclists zipping across the city, and a performance by the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra. It's a significant improvement over Howard Drossin's orchestral score, which can be distractingly heavyhanded, though Drossin shifts to a lighter, brighter register for the subway sequences. 

Then, once King and Paul follow a lead to the Bronx, where the mogul grew up, Lee throws James Brown's thematically appropriate "Payback" into the mix. By that time, I was willing to forgive Drossin's score, because I believe–or I would like to believe–that it represents the rich man's rut in which King has found himself; hustling to stay on top, taking his family for granted, and losing touch with the human-made music that once invigorated him as the producer and A&R guy with "the best ears in the business."

And that's the film in a nutshell: old dude gets his groove back. Not everyone needs a board coup or a kidnapping to get their head straight, but King let his get twisted, and what could have been a by-the-books genre exercise feels deeply personal, something I couldn't say about High and Low, a superior effort in many respects--though I can't imagine Toshirô Mifune spitting bars like Denzel Washington--but not one that tells me as much about its maker. 

If Highest 2 Lowest is Lee's most successful remake to date–a low bar in light of his misguided Ganja & Hess update Da Sweet Blood of Jesus–it's neither his best nor his worst film, but rather a Spike Lee joint through and through, and I'll be damned if the not-so-young dude doesn't still have it. 

Highest 2 Lowest opens at SIFF Uptown and Regal Meridian on Fri, Aug 15. It comes to Apple TV+ on Fri, Sept 5. Images from the IMDb (Denzel Washington times two and Toshirô Mifune with Kyôko Kagawa as Kingo and Reiko Gondo), Screen Rant (Washington with Ilfenesh Hadera), and VIBE (Spike Lee with John Turturro / Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images).