Spike Lee, arguably cinema’s definitive chronicler of New York, begins his latest film with a sneaky grin, scoring the opening credits to the tune of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from – you got it – the musical Oklahoma! As Matthew Libatique’s camera marvels at the city’s gleaming skyscrapers, we eventually arrive at the home of the fabulously wealthy record exec David King (Washington). One imagines every morning is beautiful from his penthouse terrace.
But just as David is looking down, others are looking up to King David, as the papers have dubbed the music man with the Midas touch, and they want what he has. Early on, his teenage son Trey (Joseph) is scooped up in a kidnapping plot at the same time David is trying to pull off a boardroom deal to reclaim control of his label. The ransom is ruinous – $17.5 million – and the stakes raise even higher when complications arise.
If any of this rings familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen Akira Kurosawa’s film High and Low, or read the 1959 crime novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, from which both films are loosely sourced. Lee makes the material his own, for better and for worse. In Kurosawa’s 1963 original, the father’s moral dilemma was more pronounced, the police investigation far more winding and detailed, the class gaps more pungent. Highest 2 Lowest, scripted by Alan Fox (in his first feature credit), dials the suspense down on the first two and opts out of any meaningful interrogation of King’s extreme wealth. The film is less interesting for it.
But in the pantheon of great actors who can chew scenery with gusto, Washington is in every way an equal to Toshiro Mifune. (In a crucial supporting role, Jeffrey Wright is just as impactful.) Donning cool shades and sharp suits, Washington modulates David’s affect to match the moment in every room he saunters into, from intimidating to ingratiating to affectionate, and he carries too the weightiness of his previous four collaborations with Lee, including that legendarily he-was-robbed Oscar-nominated performance in Malcolm X. Still, there were things about the character I couldn’t make sense of – for instance, the implication that his much, much younger wife (Hadera, flat) had been beside him throughout a “25-year” career, which contradicts a magazine cover of David also touting The Arsenio Hall Show and Talking Heads, which would date his career back closer to 35 years ago. In the grand scheme it probably doesn’t matter much, but the tiny inconsistencies nagged at me.
Far more distracting is the deployment of Howard Drossin’s orchestral score, purposefully old-fashioned and dialed up to 11, pulling focus from character interactions and dampening the suspense. It’s a head-scratching choice because Lee’s movies are so inherently musical – in the rhythm of the edits, the dialogue that runs from rat-a-tat to soaring, even his signature dolly-tracking shots that are experienced like mini orchestral movements. That score is such a drag it was close to ruining the movie for me, until Lee shifts gears into a second-act action set-piece that sweeps in Yankees gameday crowds and the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. Bopping to the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra and breath-catchingly tense, the sequence is about as virtuosic as anything Lee has put to screen in his four exceptional decades of work. If there was ever any question, the answer is signed, sealed, and delivered here: Yeah, he’s still got it.
This article appears in August 15 • 2025.
