Wits and wags will pun the title of this movie to death, but I can’t resist jumping on that bandwagon. Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee’s return to the director’s chair after a five-year pause, rides high for the first half of the picture and then plummets to the lowest depths in the second half. 
Highest 2 Lowest is a remake of Akira Kurasowa’s 1963 classic High and Low. High and Low was a critical and commercial success. The Spike Lee remake will not repeat either achievement.
High and Low earned acclaim because of the way it dealt with stresses between social classes in Japan in the post-World War II environment. There will always be social stresses, no matter what the time period, but I’m not sure it translates well to African-American culture in 2025.
Highest 2 Lowest is not about white privilege or rich and poor. Lee’s movie is almost post-racial, in that the vast majority of characters are black and very good at what they do. Do some African-Americans do better than others financially and socially? Of course. But this film doesn’t delve into why that may be so.
In this movie, the most one could say that drives envy between one minority and another is ‘getting a shot.’ That is, those who make it feel they capitalized on the chance they received to prove themselves, while others are aggrieved they either didn’t get that chance or were unjustly rejected when it was their time to shine.
Without widespread social and psychic currents to tap into, Highest 2 Lowest can’t muster enough metaphor to make an impact.
What the movie does very well (in the first half) is ask us, in a subtextual sense, how far empathy for others extends. This dramatic purpose can exist if the characters are Japanese, African-American, wealthy, deprived, or anything in between.
The lead character is David King, a successful rap and hip-hop mogul (think Russell Simons). He’s equal parts gregarious, cunning, and, when he needs to be, cold as ice. His chauffeur, Paul, is a childhood friend. They grew up roughly, in the Bronx, and while David became a success, Paul went to jail. David didn’t give up on Paul and took him on as his driver. David and Paul each have a son, who are best friends.
David’s son is marked for kidnapping, and the crooks demand $17.5 million, which will bankrupt David and thwart any future plans he has to remain a player. But we soon learn the kidnappers have accidentally snatched Paul’s son. David balks at paying when only moments before he was ready to give it all away for his own flesh and blood.
The entire strength of the movie is in these sequences, as we see David’s limits tested. Indeed, his limits are our limits. You might send $5 to a relief fund for a cause on the other side of the world but ignore your neighbor if he is down on his luck. How many Go-Fund Me’s raise hundreds of thousands for obviously guilty people? Why didn’t that money go to a homeless person?
David is in a Catch-22. If he pays the kidnappers he loses his fortune. If he doesn’t, being such a public figure, he’ll be shunned and his reputation forever ruined.
These questions and conundrums are well presented and hit any viewer in the gut. What should David do? What would you do? The movie is holding up a mirror to anyone watching and asking them how true their morals and empathy actually are.
The problem for Highest 2 Lowest is that once we enter the second half of the movie, many of these questions are abandoned, and the film becomes more like a crime-actioner—and not a good one.
I won’t say what happens, but it was a little hard to believe, and the tension and grittiness built up in the first half was lost in a cartoonish conclusion.
Like many of Lee’s movies, Highest 2 Lowest is an homage to New York, its shimmering castles, its barrios and ethnic enclaves, its arboreal, root-like subway system, and its wastelands.
Lee again returns to the acting troupe he knows and trusts. Denzel Washington plays David King. Rick Fox and Rosie Perez make cameos. There’s a jazzy score and one of those dolly tracking shots Lee can’t seem to resist. He still has an obsession with Larry Bird and Boston Celtics fans.
But these are cute asides. Highest 2 Lowest doesn’t succeed or fail because of the marginalia. It asks some uncomfortable questions, but it answers those questions an hour in. And so we are left with a second hour that clumsily tries to bring us a resolution. Unfortunately, the highs and the lows cancel each other out, and we are left with a picture that is merely flat.
BLAST RATING: 2 OUT OF 4 STARS