43° TFF - Highest 2 Lowest di Spike Lee (2025)
- Planet Claire
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read
review by Clara Bruno – 23 November 2025r eading time: 8 minutes film seen at TFF – Cinema Massimo Uno on 22 and 23 November 2025
official screening: 22 November 2025
Cinema Massimo 1
seen again at the repeat screening on 23 November 2025
running time: 133’
With Highest2Lowest, Spike Lee, on dazzling form, says everything there is to say about the present day, about the world we live in. The direction is superb, the cast perfect; it’s a magnificently crafted and highly entertaining film, naturally carrying a strong moral message signed Spike Lee.
This crime story is Lee’s very personal rereading of Akira Kurosawa’s great 1963 film, the dark noir High and Low (Italian title: Anatomia di un rapimento). Reimagined by the New York filmmaker, it becomes a gripping, tightly paced, witty film that can be seen as a summa of his entire cinematic oeuvre.
Spike Lee delivers a bold, lively, deeply urban film – a pulsing adventure set in today’s New York, a love letter to the sport and music of his city, but also an open critique of the profit-driven logic of the music business.
At the press conference of the 43rd Torino Film Festival, the director, who loves to define himself essentially as a storyteller, told us that this is not a remake of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, but his personal reinterpretation. The difference is substantial: Lee says his own things; Kurosawa’s reflection was, naturally, different in era and culture. In Kurosawa’s film, the incomparable Toshiro Mifune played Gondo, a wealthy executive of a shoe company who recklessly mortgages his luxurious family penthouse – with its spectacular view over Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city on Tokyo Bay – in order to acquire a controlling share in the company. But just as he is about to close the biggest deal of his life, a kidnapper abducts a child he believes to be Gondo’s son, when in fact the boy is the son of Aoki, Gondo’s devoted and submissive chauffeur, played by Yutaka Sada. Should Gondo use the borrowed money – intended for the purchase of the company – as ransom to save his servant’s son? High and Low in Japanese means “Heaven and Hell”: Kurosawa’s work centres on the class divide between Gondo and Aoki, even though his protagonist is not haughty but rather endowed with a quietly positive humanity, torn by an intense moral dilemma. The themes of that beautiful drama are, in short: classism; Kurosawa’s critical observations on the transformation of modern Japan; and a condemnation of police inertia as a symbol of a capitalist society that is – for Kurosawa – inherently criminal. Its tone is one of complex, melancholic pessimism, which is naturally lost in Spike Lee’s version.
The original material on which the story is based is the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, a New York writer of Italian descent specialising in crime and legal thrillers, who set it in a fictional city inspired by New York.
Spike Lee recounts that he became an absolute cinephile thanks to his mother, who from early childhood took him to see the great classics (while his father introduced him to jazz). He discovered Kurosawa’s work during his university years at the Film Academy – School of Film and Acting in New York, and the Japanese master became one of his favourite authors because every one of his works dealt primarily with morality and ethics, exactly what Spike Lee loves to tell about.
Lee transplants the action from the Japanese metropolis of Yokohama to New York – or, better yet, brings it back to NYC, according to the source material. In Lee’s film, the shoe executive becomes legendary music producer David King, played with regal assurance by Denzel Washington, perfect in the role.
In the opening scene, it’s dawn: Mr King smiles as he looks out over his New York “kingdom” from his multi-million-dollar terrace in a sleek contemporary building in D.U.M.B.O. (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), the Brooklyn district opposite the Manhattan Bridge – once industrial, now gentrified into a high-tech, artistic neighbourhood (I lived there briefly in 2017). Lee frames the scene with the inspired extradiegetic accompaniment of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’, from the opening of the 1940s Broadway musical Oklahoma!. The magnificent mansion is full of remarkable sports memorabilia and major contemporary artworks, which, as the director, a great collector, explained, come from his wife’s personal collection (the film uses replicas made specifically for production). Everywhere in the enormous penthouse we see oversized portraits of Mr David King: magazine covers that underline -with no need for irony- his immense wealth, prestige, and impeccable taste.
Highest2Lowest vibrates with energy and vitality, moving across the screen with the beautiful agility of its superstar lead. Denzel Washington carries the entire film magnificently, delivering an exemplary performance. He has worked with Lee four times before: Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992), He Got Game (1998), Inside Man (2006), a longstanding and beautiful collaboration.
The cast is very local!
The protagonist’s wife is the glamorous Pam (played by Ilfenesh Hadera, a stunning Harlem-born actress of Ethiopian and European heritage, daughter of an Ethiopian refugee). She has also frequently collaborated with Spike Lee. In Highest2Lowest, she plays the elegant wife of the music-business magnate. A committed philanthropist, she supports young African-American artists.
The millionaire’s teenage son is Trey (actor Aubrey Joseph, born in Brooklyn). Trey is updated into a teenager several years older than Gondo’s child in the Japanese film, and he’s a talented basketball player, as cool as his peers.
The terrible news of Trey’s presumed kidnapping turns out to be a case of mistaken identity: the culprit has accidentally taken Kyle (Elijah Wright, also raised in Brooklyn), Trey’s best friend and David’s godson, and the son of their chauffeur and family friend Paul (actor Jeffrey Wright, who is the boy’s real-life father). Paul is not merely a servant (or employee) of the magnate. His character carries a troubled backstory: he is widowed, is a former inmate who converted to Islam, and shares a deep, longstanding friendship with Mr King, who helped him greatly. David King is not a snob; he genuinely cares for Paul. But the fundamental dilemma remains: should David jeopardise his business plans and risk financial ruin to save someone outside his own family?
In one scene (the only one I found naïve, though it demonstrates the deep respect the director has for Black music), the great producer vents in his private studio to his imaginary heroes: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and others. He asks their portraits, “What would you do, Stevie?”, “What would you do, Aretha?” And then even James Brown (who –one might say– was not exactly a model family man…).
Lee weaves in a thread of realism and racial prejudice when suspicions arise within the police that Paul – with his criminal past – could have staged the kidnapping himself. Lee has these suspicions voiced by the racist white officer, Detective Higgins (Dean Winters).
In Kurosawa’s film, the ransom drop on the train is a classic suspense sequence; Lee, for his part, uses the New York subway masterfully, heading towards Yankee Stadium, packed with fans chanting “Let’s go Yankees”, just as in 25th Hour. The police have hidden a GPS tracker in the money bag. The kidnapper and his team of agile scooter-riding accomplices must have swapped the money for another, untraceable bag, and it’s not immediately clear how. Needless to say, the ransom sequence is spectacular from start to finish. And the chase on the subway, intercut with the gigantic Puerto Rican Day Parade, is Spike Lee’s homage to William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) with Gene Hackman.
But who is the villain? Suspicion falls on a young rapper from the inner city, named Yung Felon, greedy, sexist, (but undeniably rather cool), played very effectively by A$AP Rocky. And Lee constructs an incredible showdown in the form of a rap battle between him and David King.
A$AP Rocky (born Rakim Athelston Mayers in Harlem, New York) is an influential figure: rapper, producer, model, designer, and professional actor, who broke into the mainstream about fifteen years ago. His primary musical style is East Coast hip-hop. Widely recognised as a fashion icon, he has collaborated with major designers. He is partnered with Rihanna and publicly described as a “loving husband”. Their relationship is stable, and the couple have three children together.
The soundtrack is essential to the storytelling: every piece of music precisely expresses each scene and helps narrate it. The score is interwoven with the narrative in a spectacular way. Three key tracks by James Brown feature: The Payback; The Boss; and The Low Down. These soul songs, along with others, highlight the film’s dramatic tension: the editing was done cutting scenes to the beat of the music, so the music shapes the images and their emotional impact. Extended scenes live through both diegetic and extradiegetic music.
The protagonist Mr King is, before being a father and a crime victim, a man of music following his instinct: he resorts to his special musical “ear” to identify the culprit and recover his money.
Here is the track listing of Highest 2 Lowest (Soundtrack from the Apple Original Film), also available on Spotify:
"Highest 2 Lowest" Aiyana-Lee
"We Got This" Fergus McCreadie Trio and Howard Drossin
"And Now We Shall Begin" Howard Drossin
"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin " Norm Lewis
"All Money Ain't Good Money" Howard Drossin
"Loving Partners” Fergus McCreadie Trio
"Da LowdownEddie Palmieri and Afro-Caribbean Jazz Octet
“Trunks” ASAP Rocky
"The Chase” Fergus McCreadie Trio and Howard Drossin
"Paul Begs" (Solo Piano) Fergus McCreadie Trio
"Da Kings " Howard Drossin1
"Questioning Kyle" Howard Drossin
"King David" Jensen McRae
"Both Eyes Closed" ASAP Rocky
"Loving Partners" Howard Drossin
"Puerto Rico" Eddie Palmieri and the Salsa Orchestra
"Paul Begs" Fergus McCreadie Trio
"Brooklyn Hospital" Howard Drossin
"Prisencolin" (Americano Joint) Aiyana Lee Anderson
Yes, Prisencolinensinainciusol is the famous 1972 song by Adriano Celentano, with deliberately nonsensical lyrics in a made-up “English”. Rap ante litteram, a brilliant conceptual performance. British singer-songwriter Aiyana Lee Anderson wrote simple new lyrics for the track last summer (2025). The song was already modern fifty years ago. Aiyana turns it into a fine R&B number that plays throughout the end credits of Highest2Lowest, rounding off the film’s high-impact musical content.
Moral of the story? King will begin a new phase of his life and career, as you will see in the ending, carrying a precious message from master storyteller Spike Lee.
The film is expansive, rich, spectacular, and great fun. I’ve already seen it twice – at the Torino Film Festival. For now, there are two options to see it in Italy: Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video.
My report of Spike Lee’s press conference appears in a separate article.
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