Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

Watched 9/2/2025 (theater)

The purpose is perplexing and the execution is bizarre. As a lover of many Spike movies, I went into Highest 2 Lowest expecting an original twist on the Kurosawa movie, leveraging the thrill-seeking tempo of Inside Man and some of the pragmatic social genius of Do the Right Thing. Maybe even some of the dark, goofy humor of Blackkklansmen. And there were even a few moments during my viewing that I thought we were setting up some Da 5 Bloods-level confrontations. Instead, this movie decided to be weird.

Highest 2 Lowest starts and for almost all of its runtime plays as a blatant remake. Not a reimagining—a remake. I got my boxers in a bunch worrying that if I didn’t see this, I was somehow betraying Spike Lee, a very original artist whose movies I love for the most part. I didn’t give the remake aspect much of an afterthought, and I should of. I may be willing to forgive the tonal chicantery of Highest a lot more if it had anything new to say or do whatsoever. But it doesn’t. And that’s not even the worst part—that’s the reveal.

The most in-your-face, brutal parts of this movie are the acting, dialogue, and tone. It feels like Spike hired a soap opera director and had them add in some Lee-isms here and there while mostly just laying on thick the hammy lines and leaning heavily into the movie’s most amateurish performances. This screenwriter just goes way overboard with the colloquialisms and melodramatics. He creates odd charicatures with embarassing arguments as a result. I was not surprised to learn this Alan Fox is a first-time guy—I question why Spike Lee went with his script.

It doesn’t help that Elfidish Hedara and Aubrey Joseph, who play Denzel’s wife and son, respectively, are two incredibly corny, unconvincing actors. Every line from them is more annoying than the last, and any time Denzel says something even remotely Denzel, they find a way to make it deeply uncool, which is hard to do as Denzel’s one of the coolest to ever do it. The melodramatic moments in particular sink into this bad television feeling that I can’t believe Lee was okay with keeping. Even Jeffrey Wright feels miscast in his tough guy role, unable to be even slightly credible as an ex-con chauffer. Neither the desired humor nor the danger when push comes to shove are factors whatsoever with Wright’s character.

In fact, a lack of danger is a problem throughout. I never once felt that someone was on the brink of death despite the bevy of life-threatening situations that the characters find themselves in. Even during the movie’s best scene in which Denzel gets onto the subway with the goal of exchanging his money for a hostage who will not be named here for spoiler purposes—while there is a real welcome sense here of chaos that is absent from the rest of the film, its climax is miscalculated to the point of frustration in what could have been a special setpiece. It ends confusingly with one of multiple miscast cops yelling irritatingly at a suspect, and from there it only gets worse.

Later plot mexhanics are just as problematic as the directorial issues noted above. The way things escalate after the hostage exchange threatens to get exciting, but the final battle is completelt unrealistic and anticlimactic. And more importantly, the villain himself is anticlimax personified. His motivations are spelled out so pointedly and the actor overplays his hand so many times trying to go toe to toe with Denzel, only to end up…well, you’ll see. It’s just lame, like it was made for cable TV so anyone on their phone could understand what the movie was about and what happened after they fell asleep halfway through.

All in, this was a waste of time and money for me. I love a few Spike Lee movies. I think he has a perfect all-timer in Do the Right Thing. I think he has a few really good thrillers. This one was with Denzel and it should have been riveting. Instead, I just felt its loose screws slowly but surely rattling and eventually falling out. I wanted to give Lee and Washington my support, but if they’re going to keep making cheesy, ugly, b-rated streaming movies, I may have to bow out. Can you tell I’m disappointed??

3.5/10