Highest 2 Lowest plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

The Price of Fame? In This Case It’s $17.5 Million.

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

    Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)   rated R   133 min. 

Here’s the trailer:

        (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

        activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

WHAT HAPPENS: Here we follow the NYC (Where else would Spike Lee make a film?  OK, yes, he has occasionally gone to some other locations, but the Big Apple is clearly home base for him.) saga of David King (Denzel Washington), a music mogul who founded the Stackin’ Hits Records label, led it to great success, but some time ago he sold off enough shares in the business—a move he fully regrets now—to no longer have sole control, worried that the other investors are willing to be taken over by some corporate conglomerate that will ignore his vision for the company, so he sets out to buy back a good chunk of those shares for $17.5 million with most of what he owns for as collateral for the huge loans he’s taken out.  Just as the deal’s about to be finalized, though, he gets an anonymous call claiming his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), has been kidnapped with a demand for a $17.5 million ransom.  David and wife Pam (Ilfinesh Hadera) agree to the payment, then make 2 discoveries: (1) Trye is safe after all, but (2) the kidnapper has mistakenly taken Kyle (Elijah Wright), Trey’s best friend and son of David’s long-time friend and driver, Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright [Elijah’s Dad]).  Despite the mistake, the kidnapper still wants all of the ransom, delivered quickly or Kyle will suffer.  David’s caught up in a major quandary, but after pleas from Trey and Paul he agrees to hand over the cash, no matter the impact on his business future.  To reduce the size and weight of so much paper, the kidnapper insists the full amount be delivered in Swiss 1,000-franc notes, put in a backpack (which the police outfit with a GPS tracker); then David must carry it on a subway train leaving from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall station headed to Yankee Stadium (for a day game against the dreaded Boston Red Sox [damn Sox just beat my local Oakland West Sacramento A's 2 of 3 games]).  While in transit David gets a call to move to the semi-outside link between 2 cars, followed by an accomplice on the train pulling the emergency cord while the train’s in elevated-track mode, knocking David off-balance so the backpack falls to the street below where it’s grabbed by a guy who rushes off on a moped, chased by cops who were following David’s train.

 To thwart the police cars there are handoffs to other moped-riders, further complicated by weaving through a Puerto Rico Day celebration, with one of the riders finally caught, although his backpack’s got no cash, so there must have been another version of a handoff along the way.  Kyle’s released, with coverage of the event in the media making David a local hero even as several Stackin’ Hits Records songs move swiftly up the charts.  However, David’s money-lenders want their loans back in 2 weeks as their cash was never intended for a ransom operation, so if David can’t provide the money they’ll start taking his collateral.  ⇒Kyle can’t identify his kidnapper but does recall hearing a specific rap song frequently with David recognizing it from a cluster of demo tracks Trey prepared for him so now King knows the man named Archie is called Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky).  Paul uses a contact to get this guy’s address, joins David in going to confront him, but he’s not home; his wife tells them he’s an ex-con, idolizes David, is at a nearby recording studio.  David goes alone to confront Yung Felon, they get into a short, impromptu rap battle (this is Rocky’s livelihood, yet Washington comes across as quite competent also), with Felon telling King the kidnapping was in retaliation for being ignored as a potential Stackin’ Hits Records artist.  Their argument becomes a gunfight with Felon running out to the street where Paul’s hit in the eye by a stray bullet.  King and Felon end up on another subway train where King eventually knocks his opponent unconscious with the cops arresting him, retrieving the stolen cash from his apartment.  Felon accepts a 25-year sentence with the stipulation of another meeting with King where he tries once again to make a business arrangement, saying he’s now a social media sensation so they could both make a lot of money.  King says he’s no longer with Stackin’ Hits Records, is now running his own small label so Felon storms back to his cell (David offered Paul to be part of the new enterprise, but he and Kyle are going to move on to something else).  Back home, David and Pam audition Sula (Aiyana-Lee), discovered by Trey; she sings “Highest 2 Lowest” which impresses them greatly, they sign her up.⇐

SO WHAT? Highest 2 Lowest  marks the 5th collaboration between Lee and Washington, following Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992),¹ He Got Game (1998), and Inside Man (2006), but the plotline of this narrative also has a heritage beginning with Ed McBain’s novel, King's Ransom (1959), which was adapted to Akira Kurosawa’s  film, High and Low (1963), with the latter having many similarities to Lee’s latest work save for a change in industries from a shoe company to the world of pop music, along with a few other plot twists.  What works especially well for me in this current film is the acting acumen of Washington and Wright (all the rest, including Rocky are competent enough, but these 2 ultimate pros really carry the film’s major scenes, most impressively).

 

¹For me, it was pathetic that Washington didn’t win the Best Actor Oscar for Malcolm X (still one of the best films I’ve ever seen) because that year the prize went to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992), not a bad film nor a bad performance, but, essentially supposed to be the best of his career, no or “Hoo-ah!” as his character would say.  Of course, Pacino was basically making up for lost time from the Academy after he wasn’t recognized for his magnificent role in an equally-magnificent film, The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974, which at least got Best Picture that year unlike Malcolm X which lost to Gandhi [Richard Attenborough], a tough choice), with the 1974 Oscar inexplicably going to Art Carney for Harry and Tonto (Paul Mazursky), in what I guess must have been some sort of nostalgia-recognition for Carney as Ed Norton in those old episodes of Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners (CBS TV, 1955-’56 [and earlier sketches on Gleason TV shows]).  Still, Washington does have a couple of acting Oscars, one Best for Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001), one Supporting for Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989)—could easily have had another one, if I’d been giving them out, for Fences (which he also directed, 2016)—so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much (not that such reasoning has ever held me back thus far).  My Washington-near-worshipping wife, Nina, and I also revisited Inside Man, another pleasure as we hadn’t seen it again since its debut so long ago; it still holds up well—great tension and surprises as a pleasure to watch.

 What doesn’t work quite so effectively for me is the (inadvertent?) echoes of FOX TV’s Empire series (2015-’20) where Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is also a troubled Black music mogul (Empire Entertainment) in NYC attempting to keep his “empire” together in the face of external challenges and internal family chaos (with his wife, Cookie Lyon [Taraji P. Henson], as a fierce force of nature with no counterpart in Highest …).  I realize the main plot points in Lee’s new film are solidly based in the book and film that preceded it, but when the choice was made to shift David King’s life into the competitive world of best-selling music, I can’t help but think screenwriter Alan Fox had some of the same sense of allusions to a previously-popular TV presence as I do (of course, by using the music setting it opens up the film to recruit Rocky and Aiyana-Lee, who provide powerful presences on screen so maybe I’d better, once again, just shut up).  However, I will say while I can understand the “metaphorical” (see my comments in the next section below) use of Sula’s song that brings things to a close, it did feel tacked-on to me, as a means for encouraging soundtrack sales, not really necessary to close out this story; further, given the song’s lyrics, it would seem better titled as “Lowest 2 Highest,” even as I know that’s not an option given the source material for this film as well as what it presents about David king throughout.  One last thing for me to note here, in the film's two later, long verbal encounters between King and Felon there’s a constant use of the “n word,” which would seem to be plausible between a couple of Black men angry with each other in a story made by a noted Black director, but please be forewarned if such verbiage is troublesome for you.

BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Highest 2 Lowest had a limited domestic (U.S.-Canada) release on August 15, 2025 where one report shows it taking in $1.5 million so far, maybe more as it’s still playing somewhat on various big screens, but is now much more available via streaming where it’s free to Apple TV+ subscribers ($12.99 monthly if you want to see what’s available there).  The CCAL certainly encourages you to view it with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a most-supportive 87% while the normally-more-reserved folks at Metacritic offer an encouraging (for them) 73% average score, with me joining those who are favorably impressed by it (although I admit it doesn’t have quite the bite of Inside Man nor the sheer magnitude of Malcolm X) such as Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe, who liked it even more than I did (100%, according to Metacritic): “Lee’s tough yet undying love for the Big Apple puts him in the esteemed company of the greatest gritty New York City directors, Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese. And yet, the opening of ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is a hat tip to the first scene of Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan.’ Allen had the brilliant cinematographer, Gordon Willis, to accentuate black and white shots of Manhattan; Lee has Matthew Libatique to bring the view from Brooklyn to life in glowing, glorious color. […] Lee underscores this sequence with an unexpected choice on the soundtrack, ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,’ the opening song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical ‘Oklahoma.’ […] But the song reminds us that ‘Oklahoma’ is also another tale of the haves and have-nots. Even the view itself raises questions. Whose eyes are we looking through? A rich man who sees the city as conquest, or a poor man who sees it as unattainable without criminal means? […] Rocky does get a catchy number to perform, which will satisfy his fans. There’s also a spectacular, Oscar-worthy theme song sung onscreen by Aiyana-Lee that proves, yet again, that all Spike Lee movies are musicals under the skin. This is one of the year’s best films. It’s also one of Lee’s finest joints.”  No hesitations here!

 I don’t have to go far from home, though, to find someone not so thrilled with Lee’s presentation; witness Michael Ordoña from my local San Francisco Chronicle (this review gets 35% from MC): “If you were considering checking out the Kurosawa film before watching Lee’s interpretation, don’t. It’s something of a disadvantage to be familiar with the 1963 film’s formal brilliance and fearless plumbing of its society’s lower depths. Lee’s is another ‘joint’ entirely. In fact, it’s not easy to briefly say what the new movie is actually about. […] The social commentary that was the backbone of the Kurosawa is reduced here to the police treating David and his chauffeur, Paul (Jeffrey Wright), absurdly differently, apparently to make the filmmakers’ point about tiered levels of justice (here, due to class, rather than race). That’s not explored. Then, after the wan crime story evaporates, the focus whiplashes back to music, presenting what are essentially two music videos.”  (And yet, I keep paying for this newspaper; oh, well.)  One of those music videos Ordoña’s likely referring to is that last scene of the film with Sula’s audition, which I’ll just use as my concluding element, a Musical Metaphor where “Highest 2 Lowest” is about a woman now standing tall after a failed relationship (in the manner of Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive," which diminishes the impact of Sula’s song a bit for me) but seems to also refer to David King’s troubled journey throughout this film (the video I've chosen to illustrate this song is a bit odd in that whatever Aiyana-Lee’s saying/singing seems intentionally not synchronized to the song we’re hearing so I’ll leave the interpretation of what’s going on there to your insights); as for David’s situation these lyrics seem relevant: “And so he took me for a fool […] You underestimate me […] But I’m still alive […] And I found some peace in the pain […] Listen to me, I’m a fighter […] ‘Cause I’ve always found the light in the dark” (click here if you want the full package of the lyrics).  Or, maybe this Aiyana-Lee video was created to accompany Ordoña’s review where criticism of the object in question is intended to drive you away to some other choice.  All I can say is I enjoyed Highest 2 Lowest up until roughly the last 15 minutes, after which it seems to drag on somewhat.  I encourage you to see for yourself about what works here vs. what might not.

             

SHORT TAKES

               

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

 

Options for consideration (to keep you busy for awhile): (1) IMDb's Five Things to Watch on the week of 9/7/2025; (2) IMDb's Staff Picks for September 2025; (3) New on Netflix in September 2025; (4) New on Amazon Prime Video in September 2025; (5) New on Hulu in September 2025; (6) New on Disney+ in September 2025; and (7) New on HBO Max in September 2025.

 

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