When a titan music mogul (Denzel Washington), 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. Brothers Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the 5th in their long working relationship for a reinterpretation of the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller High and Low, now played out on the mean streets of modern day New York City.
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Highest 2 Lowest Ratings & Reviews
- Kevin Ward7 days agoFinally caught up with this and I’m pretty mixed on it. There are stretches where the score and song choices lock in beautifully, giving the film a real pulse, but other moments feel pushed too hard, like the music is trying to manufacture something…intensity? Emotion? Felt sort of the same way about the dialogue. Sometimes very pointed and precise, other times totally out of step with how people actually talk. The way the cops snap into instant hostility with Jeffrey Wright’s character feels rushed and schematic. Still, I will always sign up for a Denzel - Spike Lee collab. They’re still electric together, and Lee can still frame New York City with almost no one else. Some stunning shots in this.
- jacobrobert1329 January 2026Bad acting, bad script, bad plot, bad directing, bad cinematography
- SkyShazad10 September 2025The Best thing about this Film is that I can delete it from my Plex Library
- jake.app6 September 2025This movie had so many cringe moments i couldn't believe Denzel was in it. Really boring storyline with maybe 2 minutes of something actually happening.
- eyeofthetornado8 January 2026Well executed cover in style 👍🏻
- emdis823 August 2025This is shocking output from director Spike Lee and Washington’s performance is also underwhelming. The film deserves little more criticism not because it doesn’t deserve it but because it doesn’t command the time of day in its baseless capacity for further comment. You’d be best served watching Ransom (1996) with Mel Gibson than this trifle.
- Stankss9 September 2025i mean... what? why would denzel play in this? must have been some of the worst garbage to come out this year.. who even wrote this stuff? it has a feeling of beeing written by someone who grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth.. the dialogue is terrible the acting is bad. ( and that is coming from someone where Denzel is in my top 3 list of all time favorites. ) naaah, this was not it. gawd dang this was boring.
- fordtough687 September 2025I have always been a huge Denzel fan. Absolutely massive fan! This was almost completely unwatchable. I feel like he is hard up for money or something, or owed someone a massive debt. Enough with the woke nonsense too. White, black, green or blue. We have all had enough. The ONLY good thing about this movie experience, was that I didnt pay to watch it.
- chrislamb775 January 2026So much possibility. A massive buildup for a very simple story.
- finders3 January 2026I wish I had read the reviews before watching this, but I just relied on Denzel, having never witnessed a bad movie of his - until this one. For a Thriller / Drama, there was no thrill and no drama. Poorly acted, poorly directed, and the film just drags. 2 hours of waiting for something thrilling to happen, and it just never did. Rubbish
- PlexecutionerX6 September 2025Absolutely horrible movie... turned it off after about 40 minutes. Wanted to see where it was going but the acting and direction of the movie was just so bad. It was as if Spike Lee just gave everyone permission to improv each scene. And then the movie score was so overwhelming it felt as if the film was made in the 70s... not sure if that's what they were going for, but man this was just a really bad movie.
- joshacha3 January 2026The good second half is worth suffering through the bad first half. This movie feels like it was made by two different people, cleanly split in half. If the first hour was 20 minutes long and better edited it would have been a legit good movie.
- Roger S Joseph Jr23 December 2025It was ok. Not in my wheelhouse, but glad I watched it. Love Denzel, He was the reason I watched. DID NOT LIKE the Liberal BS Undertones for sure. I that propaganda was not here, I would have rated it MUCH higher for sure. Hollyweird, Get your shit together or loose your audience.
- CloudBasedMultiplex17 September 2025I'm questioning if these reviews are even real. This movie was the worst I've seen in awhile. Probably the only Denzel movie I've seen that I don't love. The plot was extremely weak, the movie made no sense at times, some scenes lasted 3x too long, the score was horrible and certain soundtracks were reused from earlier parts of the film (and not thematically). And don't even get me started on the high school level scene transitions. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this film
- EdmondZippo15 December 2025The beginning of this film is brutal, and that's no lie, but it makes up for it as it goes. My humble reading is that David King lived his rags to riches story and became Goliath. Everything is shiny and off-putting because it's a fable (key word for this whole film), a dream, a show that King acts out for himself and his co-money makers. Highest 2 Lowest, in its literal and figurative meanings is an urgent call for King David to humble himself and journey back down to the world that gave birth to him. From the way the film begins, with the helicopter, or drone, shots that survey the whatever bridge (I'm French, I don't care) and the city, you know, you feel, that there is a disconnect, a distance between what we see and what we should see. It's also in what we hear. Since when does a story like this open with a song like that? Spike Lee might have gone too far in depicting the dissonance, but he did it alright. I'd say that he avoids judging David, but I don't think that he has much respect for a Black man who won't even open his own car door. David King forgot where he came from. Possibly, in Lee's opinion, he's out of place in that penthouse of his. Ain't nothing wrong with being big and having money. But something's wrong with removing yourself so completely from your roots. Out of touch, man. A central theme in the first part of this film is this, I think (and I'm going to word it very strangely and provocatively, but forgive me): does money make you less Black? Not that Black people shouldn't live like David. God knows there are many. But. What's reproached to David here is rising above his community and participating in a world that wasn't built by him or for him. He made his place in it and sought to uplift others, yes, but he also distanced himself from the true reason he got here in the first place. He's away from the music, and he knows it. Being away from the music is being away from the tradition, the culture that is passed down through generations, all the way down from those who were on the boats. David has capital. What does it mean that he has capital? Know who else has capital? David is high and must be brought low. And it doesn't come from White people because his actions aren't an affront to them (in this context). His sin is against his people. So it comes from his people that he is pulled down from his penthouse and separated from his money. It takes a lot of work for him to detach from it, though. David assigns monetary value to a life. He weighs his future against a young man who might as well be of his blood. That's when the film becomes the Spike Lee joint that we expected. The camera behaves differently. There's warmth and grain in the picture. The film's alive. We're in the real, popular New York. It's colourful, vibrant, noisy. No need for the romantic, melodramatic score anymore. Live piano, trumpets, and so on. It's alive. The second part is the reckoning, the journey to the literal lowest of New York. A return to basics, to the roots. To the streets that speak, if you remember the language. Yung Thug is what happens when you don't nourish the youth, plain and simple. The pain he carries is turn into art rendered invisible not only by the mighty algorhythm, but also by David's indifference. When you're high, you're supposed to shine a light down there, to guide and pull others out of the darkness. In the bowels of a dark bloc, King David reconnects, or at least tries to, with the culture he's left behind. He at least reconnects with the culture inside of him, if not with the one who tries to carry it forward. In the end, he does not forgive the one who has trespassed against him, and leaves his fate to the good ol' justice system. Back in his penthouse, David opens his ears, and his heart, to another who carries the flame, with a renewed sense of his mission, role, responsibility (which, as we know from another New York film, derives from power). His role is to uplift the torch bearers and carry them from Lowest 2 Highest. The end.
Highest 2 Lowest Trivia
Highest 2 Lowest was released on 5 September 2025.
Highest 2 Lowest was directed by Spike Lee.
Highest 2 Lowest has a runtime of 2h 13m.
Highest 2 Lowest was produced by Todd Black, Jason Michael Berman.
The key characters in Highest 2 Lowest are David King (Denzel Washington), Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), Pam King (Ilfenesh Hadera).
Highest 2 Lowest is rated 15.
Highest 2 Lowest is a Crime, Drama, Mystery film.
Highest 2 Lowest has an audience rating of 8.3 out of 10.