{"id":67348,"date":"2025-08-13T20:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67348\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T20:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:45:07","slug":"do-the-right-thing-and-watch-highest-2-lowest-spike-lees-long-overdue-reunion-with-denzel-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/67348\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the right thing and watch Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee\u2019s long-overdue reunion with Denzel Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

In Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington plays David King, a music-industry mogul facing a moral dilemma.Apple\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Highest 2 Lowest <\/p>\n

Directed by Spike Lee <\/p>\n

Written by Alan Fox, based on High and Low by Akira Kurosawa <\/p>\n

Starring Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky <\/p>\n

Classification N\/A; 133 minutes<\/p>\n

Opens in select theatres Aug. 15, including the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto; streaming on Apple TV+ starting Sept. 5<\/p>\n

Critic\u2019s Pick <\/p>\n

There\u2019s truth in advertising, and then there\u2019s Spike Lee\u2019s new thriller Highest 2 Lowest<\/a>. In choosing to adapt Akira Kurosawa\u2019s 1963 drama High and Low (itself adapted from the 1959 Ed McBain novel King\u2019s Ransom), Lee has chosen not only the perfect source material to filter through his own I-\u2665-NYC vision, but also the perfect title. Because Highest 2 Lowest is, like much of Lee\u2019s output over the past decade, magnificently messy, with moments both transcendent and confounding. It is the highest of Lee, and the lowest. Sometimes all at once. <\/p>\n

A generous reading would posit that Lee\u2019s oscillation here is intentional, with the first half of the film representing the bland, homogenized world entrapping its own lead character, David King (Denzel Washington), a music-industry titan who is said to have the \u201cbest ears in the business,\u201d but today sits inside his Manhattan castle, having long ago lost touch with what\u2019s going on down on the streets. <\/p>\n

As David mulls either selling off his stake in his company Stackin\u2019 Hits for untold riches or scrounging together enough savings to buy it back and start over, Lee frames the business-world drama in the most corporate of fashions: all soft-focus shots of fashionable people sitting around offices, edited listlessly and backgrounded by Howard Drossin\u2019s unbearably overwrought score, one of the worst pieces of music you may ever hear outside of daytime soaps. <\/p>\n

The low-energy melodrama only gets more eye-rolling once Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of David\u2019s long-time chauffeur-slash-consigliere Paul (Jeffrey Wright), gets kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity, the criminals originally intending to nab David\u2019s teenage son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) for a handsome ransom. As David debates what to do with his fortune \u2013 save his legacy or save his best friend\u2019s son \u2013 Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox cannot for the life of them muster the tension or electricity that would naturally accompany such a personal drama. <\/p>\n

But then halfway through the film, once King David (nice one, guys) deigns to step on the streets of his kingdom and chase down his family\u2019s tormentors, Highest 2 Lowest gets a remarkable jolt of eye-popping, foot-stomping energy. The shift happens at a moment too perfect to allow such a vibe shift to be merely accidental. <\/p>\n

During a sequence set during the Bronx\u2019s annual Puerto Rican Day parade, Lee stages a wild, delightfully frenetic chase scene that involves David, a precinct\u2019s worth of incompetent cops (led by a hilariously dry Dean Winters, patron saint of New York idiots everywhere), and a wannabe hip-hop-star-cum-kidnapper named Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky). The sequence is shot with such verve and love for the Big Apple \u2013 with several NYC celebrities making cameos as themselves, including one of Lee\u2019s long-time collaborators, whose relationship with the director stretches back even further than Washington\u2019s \u2013 that it forces audiences to reconsider the preceding hour. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The film takes a turn for the better during a chase scene involving Denzel Washington and a team of incompetent cops led by Dean Winters.The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Blessedly, Lee himself doesn\u2019t glance back for the remainder of the film, with the story culminating in a ferocious confrontation between David and Yung Felon that instantly earns the sequence prominent placement in Washington\u2019s eventual lifetime-achievement sizzle reel. (Although Lee still isn\u2019t able to shake his bizarre affection for Drossin\u2019s score, which keeps creeping back with the maddening persistence of a Manhattan cockroach.) <\/p>\n

Speaking of: There is something either kind or cruel in that Washington\u2019s fifth collaboration with Lee also marks the director\u2019s best narrative film since the two last worked together more than 20 years ago, on 2006\u2019s Inside Man. (Lee acolytes may not incorrectly point out the power of 2020\u2019s Da Five Bloods<\/a>, but that movie\u2019s finale, equally bloody and silly, wasn\u2019t all that fresh on arrival and has only aged worse since.) <\/p>\n

When Lee puts Washington in just the right scene, with just the right power dynamics and just the right nerve-rattling dialogue, the result is a thing of high art. Forget the film\u2019s initial low points \u2013 just keep aiming toward the top. And keep watching King David\u2019s throne. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: In Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, Denzel Washington plays David King, a music-industry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,42729,75,2922],"class_list":{"0":"post-67348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-criticspick","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-noastack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}