You Need To Watch Denzel Washington's Overlooked Performance In Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee’s Kurosawa remake Highest 2 Lowest was well-received by critics, and it’s been doing well on Apple TV’s streaming charts, but Denzel Washington’s lead performance still hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves. Highest 2 Lowest has a very respectable 83% Rotten Tomatoes score, and it’s still in Apple’s top 10 movies, but I haven’t seen nearly enough love for Washington’s delightfully eccentric turn in the film.

Highest 2 Lowest is a modern-day reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low. Washington plays David King, a New York City music mogul trying to prevent a buyout from a rival label. Meanwhile, a mysterious kidnapper plots to abduct David’s son and hold him for a hefty ransom. But there’s a mix-up: instead of snatching David’s son, he accidentally kidnaps David’s chauffeur’s son instead.

Regardless of the mix-up, the kidnapper still wants the same ransom, so David has to choose between his fortune and his friend. It’s a great moral dilemma upon which to build a story. Lee doesn’t tell that story quite as perfectly and pristinely as Kurosawa did, but Highest 2 Lowest is a very well-crafted remix.

Denzel Washington Gave A Great Performance In Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest

Lee and Washington have a long-standing working relationship. Highest 2 Lowest is the fifth movie they’ve made together after Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man, but it’s their first collaboration in nearly 20 years. Washington’s performance in Highest 2 Lowest hasn’t been praised as highly as his work in those other four films, but it should.

Washington is brilliant in this movie. He’s funny, he’s charismatic, he’s endlessly compelling, and he effortlessly commands the screen. It’s a strong dramatic performance across the board — Washington captures the depth of King’s guilt and the nuances of wrestling with this tough decision — but it’s also wonderfully unpredictable; in one scene, he spontaneously starts dropping Nas lyrics.

How Highest 2 Lowest Compares To Akira Kurosawa's High & Low

Although it has the same basic story, Highest 2 Lowest is a very different movie than the Kurosawa original. While the Kurosawa original takes place in Japan, in true Lee fashion, the remake takes place in New York. Lee moves the train drop-off sequence to a crowded subway, where he throws in the hustle and bustle of the Puerto Rican Day Parade and a gaggle of baseball fans heading to Yankee Stadium.

In the original, the protagonist is a board member in a shoe corporation; in the remake, he’s a music producer with the “best ears in the business.” Lee recreates the original film’s iconic climactic confrontation between the businessman and the kidnapper, but he moves it from a prison to a recording studio — and, crucially, he doesn’t end the story there.

Whereas Kurosawa ended the movie with that tense confrontation, Lee uses that confrontation as a springboard into an action-packed final act. Highest 2 Lowest doesn’t deviate from the original too much until this final half-hour, which is arguably the weakest part of the remake (you can’t improve on perfection). Fortunately, a slight stumble in the third act isn’t enough to derail the whole movie.

Spike Lee Previously Directed A Much Worse Remake Of A World Cinema Classic

When it was first announced that Lee would direct a remake of a Kurosawa masterpiece, I was a bit skeptical, because we’d been down that road before. Highest 2 Lowest wasn’t the first time Lee remade a world cinema classic for an American audience. In 2013, Lee directed an English-language version of Oldboy that was panned by critics and bombed at the box office.

Lee’s Oldboy remake plays it safe; it doesn’t take the risks that Park Chan-wook was willing to take, or go as deep into the challenging themes of the story. The remake lacks the brutality that made the 2003 Korean original such a gut-punch. So, there was a precedent for Lee’s High and Low remake to end up equally disappointing.

Every Spike Lee Movie To Watch After Highest 2 Lowest

Thankfully, Highest 2 Lowest wasn’t a repeat of Oldboy ’13, and it arrived as one of Lee’s best films in years. And if you haven’t checked out the rest of Lee’s filmography, Highest 2 Lowest is just the tip of the iceberg. Lee is one of the greatest living filmmakers, and many of his films carry an important social message.

On the festival circuit in 1986, Lee arrived with his feature-length directorial debut: a quirky little black-and-white romcom called She’s Gotta Have It, which, along with Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, went on to revitalize indie cinema. She’s Gotta Have It put Lee on the map, but 1989’s Do the Right Thing put him in the hall of fame.

Do the Right Thing is a keenly observed look at racial tensions in a sun-baked Brooklyn neighborhood, and it’s still Lee’s finest film to this day. If you like Highest 2 Lowest, then it’s also worth checking out Lee and Washington’s previous collaborations — especially Malcolm X, one of the greatest biopics ever made, and Inside Man, an airtight bank-heist thriller.