Highest 2 Lowest: It’s solidarity versus capitalism in Spike Lee’s erratic kidnapping thriller

• Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival

Long live Spike Lee and long live Denzel Washington. The filmmaker and the towering star of some of his greatest films – not least Malcolm X – are together again for Lee’s latest joint, Highest 2 Lowest, a corporate drama and crime thriller combined into one that’s all about power, money, and self-interest in the world of modern Black capitalism and the music biz. It stuffs a lot of ideas into its running time, and while it isn’t always tonally perfect, it’s simply a pleasure to watch. 

Washington is David King, a hyper-successful mogul and founder of Stackin’ Hits Records, an early 2000s label which is past its heyday but once earned him a rep as ‘the best ears in the business’. Knowingly leaning into Washington’s age and star power, King is shown as an adored and charismatic figure, but one who is also out-of-touch with social media and newer avenues to musical stardom. He has been outstripped by competitors, and his business risks being bought out by a looming, AI-heavy corporate entity. 

This is Lee’s reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low, which imagines a wealthy shoe company executive who is asked to pay a ransom when his son is kidnapped – only to learn it’s his colleague’s son instead and forced into a moral quandary as a result. It is the same situation which befalls the King family, when their beloved only son Trey (Aubrey Joseph), a teenager at basketball summer camp, is presumably stolen from them. They soon discover it is his best friend Kyle (Elijah Wright) who was kidnapped mistakenly — but the ransom is still being demanded, or else. Kyle is the son of King’s best friend and driver, Paul, a Black Muslim with a past, played by an ever-dynamic Jeffrey Wright. King is faced with a decision: will he shell out most of his family’s money and assets, $17.5 million dollars, to save Kyle’s life? There’s the ethical bind, one of Black solidarity versus capitalism but also, interestingly, one of reputation. If King wants to save his record company from a buy-out and restore it to his original vision, letting his friend’s son be killed is going to ruin his good name; who will want to work with him once he’s cancelled online? It’s a surprisingly cynical observation for a film which mostly seems to like and respect its protagonist; but King’s decision to finally help Kyle is predicated as much on shrewd business calculation than it is total altruism. 

Tonally, Highest 2 Lowest often feels like a lark to watch. It’s funny and enjoyable, but there’s almost a jarringly optimistic treatment of these life-or-death stakes. Its jaunty score by Howard Drossin and frequent levity sometimes fail to emphasise the gravity of this hostage situation and its implications. We know someone might be killed, but we don’t always feel it. 

With Matthew Libatique’s bright, spacious cinematography of the most gleaming NYC penthouses and high-rises, there’s an interesting lack of edginess you might expect to be inherent in the material. But Washington’s performance goes a long way in keeping things believable: with muscular conviction, he is able to bear the weight of a sometimes-thin screenplay, as in a scene where he sits alone in his office, talking to the photos of Black music legends on the wall in half-unhinged monologue as he tries to decide whether to pay the ransom. 

The kidnapper, who for much of the film is only identified by his aggressive phone calls, is played by Grammy-winning New York rapper A$AP Rocky. His kidnapper turns out to be an aspiring rapper and ex-con who goes by the name of Yung Felon and has spent much of his life obsessively admiring and seeking the attention of the record exec who he hopes will sign him. When he finally does materialise, the results are explosive. The rapper is surprised by King in his recording studio, where the two riff, threaten, and even have a quasi-rap battle — cussing and threatening King in an endless stream of seething anger. The pair have remarkable chemistry, with the younger actor more than holding his own in the face of one of our most formidable screen presences. The strange parasocial relationship that Yung Felon and David King develop – that of youthful rage and working-class aspiration versus the more measured, frustrated, respectable voice of success – says much about the generational, musical, and monetary divide between Black people in America and is by far Highest 2 Lowest’s greatest success, accounting for its most compelling scenes. 

But even its digressions are, for the most part, compelling and playful, with Lee using decorative transitions, splitscreens, 16mm, and handheld at various points. Take the sequence of David King doing the money drop-off for the ransom; it uses authentic footage of the Puerto Rican Day Parade as its backdrop or sees Washington striding through New York subway cars outside Yankee Stadium to be surrounded by rabid baseball fans shouting anti-Boston slogans direct to camera. Or when King imagines a mini music video starring Yung Felon in his orange jumpsuit at the courthouse, complete with wiggling butts in thongs. 

Highest 2 Lowest doesn’t always fire on all cylinders; it has a subplot about King relearning to love the music he got in the biz for, and it concludes by seeing him achieve success with it. He finally listens to the younger generation and signs a talented new singer. But none of those scenes are as volatile as anything that happens between A$AP and Denzel. It has the tendency many of the auteur’s films do: he loves to go off-piste or throw all his ideas at the wall, making exciting work that can sometimes emerge feeling clunky. And yet he brings an exuberant, vivid, scalpel-smart vision to it all, especially when he is joined by the presence of one of our greatest actors. With Highest 2 Lowest, the results are uneven, but magical all the same.