Denzel Washington and Spike Lee Reteam to Adapt Akira Kurosawa, but Disappoint.
DIRECTED BY SPIKE LEE/2025
I demand the immediate release of the real Spike Lee. Because clearly, the firebrand filmmaker has been abducted and replaced by whoever made this movie. Though a remake of one of the legendary Akira Kurosawa’s most revered films- 1963’s Toshirô Mifune-starring High and Low, itself a tale of class division and inherently critical of wealth-based hierarchy- Highest 2 Lowest fails in almost every way to effectively mine that territory. Even in reimaging it via that film’s source material, Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom: An 87th Precinct Mystery, it sputters. Which is a striking shame, considering Spike Lee’s history of outspokenness and the potential potency of such material in a post-Parasite world.
In Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington, assuming the Mifune role, reunites the star with Spike Lee for the first time since 2006’s Inside Man. Perhaps not coincidentally, that film stood out amid his brazen filmography as Lee’s film with the most mainstream sensibility. That is, until this one.
Washington plays David King, a very comfortable, very established NYC record label exec whose high school-aged son is kidnapped and held for $17.5 million ransom. Though King is at a professional crossroads and needs that money to buy out his label partner and keep doing what he’s been doing, he and his wife (Ilfenesh Hadera in a thankless role) will pay whatever it takes to get their son back safely. Things get more complicated, however, when the kidnappers refuse to release the son’s friend who was also kidnapped… the son of King’s closest employee (Jeffrey Wright). And they don’t change the ransom amount. Will King risk his current aspirations to get back someone else’s son?
Aging directors slipping into a slower tempo and thereby making forgettable “old man films” is nothing new. We see it in the twilight of the filmographies of greats such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Billy Wilder. Even Kurosawa himself did it with 1991’s Rhapsody in August. At only age sixty-eight, it seems a bit early for Spike Lee to be making old man films. And yet, that’s how Highest 2 Lowest registers. Washington’s character is laid back to a fault (the very opposite of his presence in Fences), almost whispering at times- and the rest of the film follows suit. Even the two chase sequences never quite seem to get up to speed. Visually, the movie is staid.
Worse than that, though, is the issue of just how stunningly out of touch Highest 2 Lowest is. Beneath its frequent boomer dismissals of things like A.I. and smartphones lies that irksome “no school like the old school”/we-know-best/we-still-got-it! entitlement, not unlike that fueling films like Top Gun: Maverick and F1: The Movie. In a movie where the greatest dramatic tension lies in whether or not our protagonist is going to lay down his fortune and his business for a poor man’s son, this kind of reassurance of the caste pecking order simply rubs very wrong.
Sidebar commentary and other supplemental interests such as New York sports fandom, observations on police behavior, racial dynamics, etc.- all entirely expected in any given Spike Lee joint- actually clutter the flow of this movie. Recently deceased Latin jazz great Eddie Palmieri has an extended guest appearance as himself playing a Puerto Rican street fair, which is cool. Less cool is how Palmieri’s music ends up scoring a tepid chase scene. Lee cuts to Puerto Rican flags and signage as to be making a point. The point, however, amounts to a nod… or perhaps less.
With David King’s propensity for God talk and wearing a big cross and being called “King David” all the time, it’s evident that Washington’s own stated beliefs are cross-pollinating with his character. But rather than actively get at any of King’s hypocrisy in his situation as a rich man initially refusing to help a poor man (and then doing so largely because of bad publicity and the social media hate we’re told he’s getting) and maybe equating it to the current atmosphere of wealth and power’s fusion and bolstering by way of mainstream Christianity- we’d expect no less from Lee- we get cushy reassurances of the status quo. When this high and mighty figure is momentarily brought low, it’s mainly so that King can give a lecture. Still, Washington’s confrontation with rapper Yung Felon, played exceptionally by A$AP Rocky, is the best scene in the movie, and by quite some measure.
It’s difficult to believe that the potent piss-and-vinegar boldness that’s defined Spike Lee’s career has suddenly muted. It’s far more believable that someone has kidnapped the director and replaced him with his doppelgänger. Which is why I for one am demanding the release of the real Spike Lee. Now especially, we need that Spike Lee, not Spike 2.