Conclusion
Director Spike Lee and actor Denzel Washington have a long history of working together. They first collaborated on 1990’s Mo’ Better Blues—the first of five movies on which they’ve teamed up. And rumor has it that Highest 2 Lowest might not be their last.
But should it be?
Highest 2 Lowest—a rather loving remake of the 1963 classic High and Low from legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa—offers plenty of strong messages to chew on. Kurosawa is known for exploring themes of justice and redemption, and many of his main characters face what would seem to be no-win moral choices. Highest 2 Lowest fits that ethos. And the charismatic Washington, so adept at playing characters with both the highest and lowest of principles, gives David King believability and depth.
But Lee also wants to examine our social media age—where success is weighed in followers and clicks, and where one’s online reputation can make or break you. It drills into a paradox very much at home in the 21st century: how being a bad guy in the real world can pay off big in the virtual one. “Attention is the biggest form of currency,” we hear. And that can be all too true.
That message gives Highest 2 Lowest a curiously old-fashioned vibe. The film begins with a lecture on screen time and, in some ways, that lecture never stops. It trumpets the virtues of an age gone by: King’s home is festooned with pictures of jazz, rock and R&B legends. And you can almost feel Spike Lee sadly shaking his head as the movie breaks out its rap tracks—emphasizing their vapid lyrics with a purposefully wince-inducing, morally bankrupt music video.
And that brings us to the movie’s biggest content drawback, but one that comes with an interesting wrinkle: the language.
With a couple of exceptions, Lee’s directorial catalog is largely R-rated—much of the time for language. That’s certainly the case in Highest 2 Lowest. But here, Lee seems to use language to emphasize the decline of both music and society. Early on, when David’s on top of the world, the script is largely profanity free. But once our kidnapper is introduced, the mood—and the language—changes. Every other word out of his mouth is a cussword. And the closer David is to the kidnapper, the more profane he becomes, too.
Highest 2 Lowest is, then, a fitting title for what we see. When David’s at his highest point—literally standing on his penthouse deck, his reputation intact and his beautiful family nearby—his integrity is at its highest, too. But in the end, he descends into a dank, dark honeycomb of underground tunnel. It’s a metaphorical underworld representing David’s life, and his hopes, at their lowest. His language follows suit. To make it out of that dark space, he must, on some level, reach higher.
Highest 2 Lowest should be approached with definite caution. The content here can be extreme. But it does come with a purpose, too.