Curator Watchlist
A bold, uneven crime thriller with flashes of Spike Lee’s visual invention and moral urgency, but also enough tonal whiplash and structural roughness to keep it from being an easy recommendation. It’s most rewarding if you’re open to a messy, provocative remake that values ideas, performance, and attitude over… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 2h 13m
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera
When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Spike Lee
Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera
A bold, uneven crime thriller with flashes of Spike Lee’s visual invention and moral urgency, but also enough tonal whiplash and structural roughness to keep it from being an easy recommendation. It’s most rewarding if you’re open to a messy, provocative remake that values ideas, performance, and attitude over clean suspense mechanics.
Highest 2 Lowest is the kind of movie that can feel like a provocation in real time. Spike Lee takes a familiar ransom-thriller framework and bends it toward modern celebrity, money, and performance, with Denzel Washington anchoring the whole thing as a man whose power is suddenly exposed as fragile. When it clicks, the film has real voltage: sharp images, a restless sense of movement, and a willingness to be funny, ugly, and strange all at once.
But it’s also a film that seems determined not to settle into one mode for long. The first stretch can feel overcooked or even self-sabotaging, and the score and tonal choices will divide people fast. Some viewers will read that as chaos; others will see a director deliberately refusing the safety of a prestige remake.
The result is less a smooth thriller than a conversation piece: part crime drama, part satire, part star vehicle, part formal experiment. If you want Spike Lee at his most controlled, this may frustrate you. If you want him swinging hard and making choices that are impossible to ignore, it has plenty to chew on.
Framesofnick (3.5★) · 3192 likes
I wasn’t sold on this until a$ap rocky said pussy in a way that had me lean forward
jonathan fujii (3★) · 3135 likes
Idk if I hate anything as much as Spike Lee hates Boston
JP (2★) · 2811 likes
A pointless remake that does nothing but embarrass itself for most of it’s runtime. Kind of confused how someone as talented as Spike Lee was even behind this. I don't think they ever knew what this was trying to be, it is all over the place. The script is awful. The first hour genuinely features some of the worst filmmaking of the year. They try to match the first hour of the original, and it is so bad. The music… more
Patrick Willems · 2336 likes
Spike sure made a lot of choices here and some work and some really do not but they’re all interesting But also truly what is up with the score
demi adejuyigbe · 2127 likes
dug this, but I wonder if I would’ve really loved it if i hadn’t watched High and Low in the same week. largely sublimates its politics/themes and stumbles in trying to recreate some of its highlights. also makes a very strange choice with the ending of the original; spike modifies the set-up of two men separated by glass into something that I found really interesting and clever and a lot of fun (a goofy choice in that scene might be
The essential template for the ransom-and-class-pressure structure, and the clearest point of comparison for anyone interested in how the remake reframes its moral geometry.
A sharp companion piece for its obsession with fame, delusion, and the uneasy relationship between performer and audience.
For Spike Lee’s ability to turn social tension, style, and moral heat into something volatile and unforgettable.
A polished New York crime thriller that balances intelligence, performance, and procedural tension with a strong sense of place.
For its street-level crime texture and its interest in systems, temptation, and the pressure of urban life.
A music-world drama that pairs ambition and ego with Spike Lee’s flair for performance and atmosphere.
For the director’s epic scale, command of performance, and ability to make identity and power feel cinematic.
A hard-edged crime classic with restless energy, moral grit, and a city-as-pressure-cooker sensibility.
A grounded corruption drama about a man trapped inside a system that rewards compromise.
For the collision of professionalism, obsession, and masculine code in a large-scale crime setting.
A sleek urban thriller that thrives on tension, nocturnal atmosphere, and the uneasy chemistry between its leads.
A tonal reference point for crime material that mixes swagger, comedy, and star-driven momentum.
ransom plot, moral dilemma, wealth and power, celebrity culture, music industry, modern urban crime, ego and image, social commentary
crime thriller, neo-noir, moral conflict, music business, celebrity satire, urban drama, tonal whiplash, social critique, prestige remake, 21st century