He is David King (Denzel Washington), and 20 years ago, he sat on music’s throne. A hits stacker and a kingmaker, David had the best ears in the business and the records to prove it. Now David is scrambling to retain relevance. He concocts a gamble. It might cost him his future, maybe even his legacy, but he’s been here before. Only now, the stakes are higher and challengers come from all sides.

But not even David saw this one coming. While trying to broker a deal that could redeem him and his label, David’s son, Trye (Aubrey Joseph), is kidnapped by an up-and-comer who wants everything David has. The ransom is set at $17.5 million. David has a choice: Use the money to save his son or his label. Seems obvious. But then, a wrinkle. Trye wasn’t kidnapped; Kyle (Elijah Wright), the son of David’s chauffeur, Paul (Jeffrey Wright), was. The kid may have changed, but the amount stays the same. Seventeen and change, or someone dies. Now, David has a real decision to make.

A premise so juicy, it’s been told twice before. First as a novel by Ed McBain, King’s Ransom, then in Japan by Akira Kurosawa, High and Low. That movie, one of the master’s best, was a high-wire act that balanced moral quandary with a didacticism ripe for Lee. But Kurosawa’s movie is almost as interested in the police procedural aspect of the story as the tension between the impoverished ransomer and the wealthy ransomed. Lee sidesteps any potential copaganda in his version, reducing law enforcement to a hot-tempered knucklehead (Dean Winters) and lights and sirens, and lets David solve the crime without any significant assistance from the police.

It helps that David, in a way, is searching for himself. The ransomer, Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky), comes from the same streets David once walked. He sees himself, both his abilities and his rejection, in David. Two of the best scenes in Highest 2 Lowest involve David and Yung Felon in a heated conversation with a pane of glass between them. Both are bravura performances from the actors, not to mention stellar camerawork from cinematographer Matthew Libatique. And neither, thankfully, employs Howard Drossin’s twinkling and overt score.

Highest 2 Lowest is a mixed bag. When the movie shines, it radiates. When it doesn’t, Highest 2 Lowest plays like cheap melodrama. Lee and editors Barry Alexander Brown and Allyson C. Johnson rely on a somewhat frustrating tick of using double cuts to capture the action of handshakes, hugs, and glances in rapid succession. The mirrors are everywhere: Two kids from the hood who use music to achieve fame, two sons who love basketball, two fathers willing to do anything, and two cuts for every entrance and goodbye.

Thankfully, it doesn’t sink Lee’s movie. Nor does his optimism, which forms Kurosawa’s tough and unsparing look at a brutal world, into something less straightforward. Both movies involve a scene where the ransomer and the ransomed meet in prison, and both scenes end on a chilling terror that wonder where such hatred and bitterness come from. Lee’s movie offers more answers than he has space to fully process: An absent father, the devaluing of creation, a world ripe for exploitation, etc. Any one of them would be enough, but Lee stacks them deep. Indulgent, sure, but it’s not false. Nor is the note of hope Lee brings to his movie’s ending. It’s a mean old world out there, but in here, we still have a song to sing. Maybe it’ll be the one that carries us through.

Highest 2 Lowest (2025)
Directed by Spike Lee
Screenplay by Alan Fox
Based on High and Low, written by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, Eijirô Hisaita, and based on Ed McBain’s novel, King’s Ransom
Produced by Jason Michael Berman, Todd Black
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ilfenesh Hadera, Aubrey Joseph, Jeffrey Wright, Elijah Wright, Dean Winters, LaChanze, John Douglas Thompson, A$AP Rocky
A24, Rated R, Running time 133 minutes, Premiered May 19, 2025

---