‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Review: Does Spike Lee Have the Worst Ear in the Business?

It can be easy to forget in our era of tired retellings, misguided reboots, and cash-grab sequels that some of the greatest films of all time have been remakes, especially following a particular path: the re-adaptation. That is, a film that is a second adaptation of some source material, like the Coen brothers’ True Grit, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, or John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Highest 2 Lowest, the latest Spike Lee joint, follows this prestigious pattern, but let’s get one thing out of the way up front — the film does not earn its way into this hall of fame. There are those who would argue that it was doomed from the start, in that its predecessor, High and Low, directed by the legendary Akira Kurosawa, is simply too tough an act to follow. Perhaps there is truth to that, but it’s somewhat irrelevant, as the simple fact of the matter is that Highest 2 Lowest does not even come close to living up to its own potential, regardless of the limits of what that potential may be.

Highest 2 Lowest, like High and Low, and the source material, crime novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, centers a businessman on the precipice of making a risky business move that could either make or break his storied career. This time around the man in question is music mogul David King (Denzel Washington), founder of Stackin’ Hits Records. He’s got seemingly everything one could ever hope to have: he’s not just rich, but respected. Revered as having “the best ears in the business,” admired for his unwavering commitment to supporting Black artists, he not just made it to the top, but did it “right,” with supportive wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) by his side and teen son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) eager to follow in his footsteps.

Yes, perhaps David has at times prioritized work over family, but he’s no Logan Roy — he’s involved in his son’s life enough to have banter with his basketball coach, and Trey’s head is screwed on so straight he’s got a framed poster of Kamala hanging in his bedroom amongst his various trophies.

David is, from the outside, on top of the world. But behind closed doors, pressure is mounting. Business isn’t what it used to be, and much to David’s horror, the rest of the board is poised to take a too-good-to-refuse offer from an AI-friendly competitor. Determined to preserve the artistic integrity of the company, David schemes to buy out a few business partners to regain control of the company and prevent the sale from happening, putting his reputation and finances on the line.

He’s just gotten the money together to pull off his whole plan when disaster hits: David gets a call from a kidnapper claiming to be holding Trey for ransom. The situation soon becomes even more complicated when it’s discovered that the kidnapper mistakenly took Trey’s best friend Kyle (Elijah Wright) instead, who also happens to be the son of David’s chauffeur and close confidant, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). The complicated moral quandary posed by the situation, and the inherent commentary on the ills of capitalism are rather self-evident, which is fortunate because the script by relative newcomer Alan Fox often struggles to explore them in any depth, and the characters beyond David and the eventually revealed villain (a genuinely great ASAP Rocky) feel largely unexplored.

There is plenty that could be said about this film, both good and bad. But the experience of watching this film was so dominated by one thought I feel compelled to give it the full attention it deserves:

This film has no rhythm.

There are a few sequences that beat the odds, and a climactic confrontation that is practically a rap battle and displays an almost Shakespearian flow — but these are the exceptions that prove the rule, only drawing further attention to what the rest of Highest 2 Lowest lacks so utterly. It’s bad enough that if this was any other type of film it would still be noticeable and distracting, but in a film where music is so front and center, where the protagonist is supposedly an industry-leading tastemaker, it becomes downright crazy-making.

Howard Drossin’s original score is one of the most bafflingly ill-fitted and just downright bad film scores I have ever encountered. It actively ruins the movie. At one point I paused because I thought my television might be malfunctioning, or I might be hearing music from some other source, because the score clashed so badly with the action of the scene. There is literally no point where the original score works. Elevator muzak does not do it justice. It sounds like battle menu music in a turn-based RPG (to note, Drossin has done music for games like Baldur’s Gate II). It’s not only that the score does not work for this movie, it’s that it wouldn’t work for literally any crime-thriller movie; it actively undermines tension. It’s so rotten it starts to spill over, the film itself feels off-tempo, the editing and the camerawork often feel similarly off beat in a way that the score is not entirely responsible for, but certainly does not help. The only scenes that are spared are those featuring licensed music or diegetic sound — one of the best sequences in the movie is saved by taking place during the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

It’s the level of bad that it had me rethinking Spike Lee’s whole career. When did he lose his ear for music? Was there a turning point? Has there been an issue the whole time, and I had just never realized it until now? For better and for worse, he’s always been a filmmaker who is bold above all else. His hits and misses have always been somewhat randomly distributed as opposed to following a consistent trajectory; for every Do The Right Thing and Malcom X there is a She Hate Me and a Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. The “Fight the Power” needledrop in Do The Right Thing is deservedly iconic, but was it a fluke?

I have not yet had a chance to do the full deep dive that would be required to give a conclusive verdict, but the writing on the wall is there that this has been bubbling beneath the surface for a while. BlacKkKlansman, for instance, while still a good movie on the whole, has several moments of notably hokey music. It speaks to the power of Spike Lee’s overall cool factor that this recurring shortcoming hides quite well in plain sight, but Highest 2 Lowest puts it so front and center, it’s simply impossible to ignore.

Highest 2 Lowest is now playing in theaters and streaming on Apple TV+.