Movie · 2025 · Thriller, Crime, Drama · 2h 13m · R · English
Curator score: 1.7/10 (159.8K ratings)
All $ ain't good $.
Overview
When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.7/10
IMDb: 5.5/10
Letterboxd: 2.77/5
Metacritic: 74
TMDB: 5.5/10
Director
Spike Lee
Production
A24, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Escape Artists, Mandalay Pictures, A/Vantage Pictures, Kurosawa Production
Cast
Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Elijah Wright, Aubrey Joseph, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, LaChanze, Dean Winters, Wendell Pierce, Michael Potts, Frederick Weller, Rick Fox, Rod Strickland, Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos, Nicholas Turturro, Aiyana-Lee, Ice Spice, Nuri Hazzard
Where to watch
Apple TV Plus
Curator Review
Verdict
A bold, uneven crime thriller with flashes of Spike Lee’s visual invention and moral urgency, but also enough tonal whiplash and structural roughness to keep it from being an easy recommendation. It’s most rewarding if you’re open to a messy, provocative remake that values ideas, performance, and attitude over clean suspense mechanics.
Best for
Spike Lee completists
Viewers who like ambitious remakes and reinterpretations
Fans of Denzel Washington-led prestige thrillers
People who enjoy crime dramas with social commentary
Audiences tolerant of tonal swings and formal experimentation
Skip if
You want a tightly plotted, consistently suspenseful thriller
You dislike self-conscious style or abrupt tonal shifts
You prefer remakes that stay reverent to the original
You’re looking for a polished, crowd-pleasing crime movie
Overview
Highest 2 Lowest is the kind of movie that can feel like a provocation in real time. Spike Lee takes a familiar ransom-thriller framework and bends it toward modern celebrity, money, and performance, with Denzel Washington anchoring the whole thing as a man whose power is suddenly exposed as fragile. When it clicks, the film has real voltage: sharp images, a restless sense of movement, and a willingness to be funny, ugly, and strange all at once.
Worth noting
But it’s also a film that seems determined not to settle into one mode for long. The first stretch can feel overcooked or even self-sabotaging, and the score and tonal choices will divide people fast. Some viewers will read that as chaos; others will see a director deliberately refusing the safety of a prestige remake.
Bottom line
The result is less a smooth thriller than a conversation piece: part crime drama, part satire, part star vehicle, part formal experiment. If you want Spike Lee at his most controlled, this may frustrate you. If you want him swinging hard and making choices that are impossible to ignore, it has plenty to chew on.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Framesofnick (3.5★) · 3192 likes
I wasn’t sold on this until a$ap rocky said pussy in a way that had me lean forward
jonathan fujii (3★) · 3135 likes
Idk if I hate anything as much as Spike Lee hates Boston
JP (2★) · 2811 likes
A pointless remake that does nothing but embarrass itself for most of it’s runtime. Kind of confused how someone as talented as Spike Lee was even behind this. I don't think they ever knew what this was trying to be, it is all over the place. The script is awful.
The first hour genuinely features some of the worst filmmaking of the year. They try to match the first hour of the original, and it is so bad. The music… more
Patrick Willems · 2336 likes
Spike sure made a lot of choices here and some work and some really do not but they’re all interesting
But also truly what is up with the score
demi adejuyigbe · 2127 likes
dug this, but I wonder if I would’ve really loved it if i hadn’t watched High and Low in the same week. largely sublimates its politics/themes and stumbles in trying to recreate some of its highlights. also makes a very strange choice with the ending of the original; spike modifies the set-up of two men separated by glass into something that I found really interesting and clever and a lot of fun (a goofy choice in that scene might be… more dug this, but I wonder if I would’ve really loved it if i hadn’t watched High and Low in the same week. largely sublimates its politics/themes and stumbles in trying to recreate some of its highlights. also makes a very strange choice with the ending of the original; spike modifies the set-up of two men separated by glass into something that I found really interesting and clever and a lot of fun (a goofy choice in that scene might be… more
1963 · Drama, Crime, Thriller · 2h 22m · NR · Curator 9.9/10 (261.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Max
The essential template for the ransom-and-class-pressure structure, and the clearest point of comparison for anyone interested in how the remake reframes its moral geometry.
A modern media-and-ambition thriller that studies appetite, image-making, and predatory self-invention.
Topics
crime thriller, neo-noir, moral conflict, music business, celebrity satire, urban drama, tonal whiplash, social critique, prestige remake, 21st century