By Kayvan Kaboli
Highest 2 Lowest, the latest film by acclaimed American director Spike Lee, starring Denzel Washington, has hit theaters in the second half of August. Adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, featuring Toshiro Mifune, Lee’s version not only borrows Kurosawa’s central premise but also weaves in his own reflections on culture, music, and the Black American experience.
This marks the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington. Their earlier works include Malcolm X and Inside Man, both milestones in Hollywood cinema.
The story opens in the luxurious apartment of David King (Washington), founder and major shareholder of a music production company. King’s world of privilege isn’t just about expensive homes, cars, and money. With his “golden ear” for spotting musical talent, he has built a life where art and living intertwine, surrounded by family and close friends. He now plans to make a bold move: buying back full control of his company.
But the world he has so carefully constructed collapses with one phone call: a ransom demand for his child. Only later does King discover that the kidnapper actually has the chauffeur’s son, Paul, mistaking him for King’s boy after a mix-up.
In Kurosawa’s film, the central tension arises from the class divide, between the business owner’s son and the chauffeur’s. In Highest 2 Lowest, however, Lee shifts the focus. What concerns him isn’t class hierarchy, but rather the cultural clash and protest of a younger generation within Black American music.
The kidnapper keeps demanding ransom for the chauffeur’s boy. The chauffeur (played by Jeffrey Wright) shares a relationship with King that goes far deeper than boss and employee. Still, the moral dilemma emerges: why should David and his wife risk the fortune meant to save their company for someone else’s child? (A direct echo of Kurosawa.)
Yet unlike Kurosawa, Lee does not center his narrative on the suspense of whether the chauffeur’s son will be saved. Instead, his film culminates in a climactic exchange between David King and the young felon (played by rapper A$AP Rocky). In this confrontation, Lee places himself across from the rebellious younger generation of Black America, almost as though leaving behind an artistic testament.
The young felon urges King to embrace and promote a song beloved by the youth, but David firmly refuses. He tells the young man he isn’t chasing money at any cost. The youth counters: his generation is merely playing the game set up by King’s own generation of record executives. Why should David pretend he is morally above it? Yet David insists that art and music, even in a corrupt world, must hold onto their higher essence, not sink into the mire (a clear jab at the lyrical content of much of contemporary rap).
Lee doesn’t stop at critiquing youth rebellious music; he also offers an alternative. In the film’s closing moments, King listens to the voice of a young woman whose song he intends to produce. For Lee, the ideal lies in art that maintains its highest aesthetic integrity, no matter the circumstances, even when protesting injustice.
Despite its many strengths, stellar performances from Washington and Wright, stunning painterly cinematography, and smooth narrative flow, Highest 2 Lowest has its shortcomings. Women do not have much presence in David’s utopian world and merely play secondary and companion roles, even though David’s wife is the center of his universe.
Moreover, Lee struggles to convincingly show how a young criminal could orchestrate such an intricate network to outmaneuver the police so effectively.
