Cannes 2025: Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is Barely a Real Movie | FirstShowing.net

Cannes 2025: Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is Barely a Real Movie

by Alex Billington
May 20, 2025

I can hear Akira Kurosawa rolling over in his grave all the way over in Japan. What happened here… Has Spike Lee given up on directing anything good? Does he even care anymore? His new movie is terrible – it’s cringe trash. Highest 2 Lowest is the new Spike Lee Joint that just premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. During the initial announcement of the Cannes 2025 line-up, there was a rumor that Spike Lee was arguing with the festival about not putting this film in the Main Competition (where Do the Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman have premiered before). Now that I’ve had a chance to watch it, I don’t think it should be at this festival at all. They should’ve rejected it outright. This movie is rubbish. It belongs in the dumpster. I’m shocked by how atrociously bad it is (and yes, I’ve quite enjoyed his recent films including Da 5 Bloods & BlacKkKlansman). At best it’s a Saturday Night TV movie – not meant for the big screen in any way. At worst the studio should scrap it to save face with Kurosawa and save themselves from tarnishing his legacy.

Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest is his modern day New York City remake of the iconic 1963 Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, about the kidnapping of the son of a businessman (although it turns out to be the son of his driver they accidentally grab instead – which is an important plot detail). Anyone who knows Spike’s filmography knows that he has an incredible relationship with actor Denzel Washington, and they reteam once again for this one. While Denzel is obviously a supremely talented actor, he seems to be phoning in it this time. Which might be Spike’s fault more than Denzel’s, as there’s seemingly no interest in directing a good movie at all. Most frustrating is that it seems Spike Lee doesn’t even understand the original High and Low story or care about its themes and what it’s trying to say. I was worried about this when I watched High and Low just before the festival to get a refresher going into this remake. As I expected might happen, Spike spends all his time focusing on the businessman character and the city and the money, and little meaningful time on the consequences and retribution and aftermath. His ending also betrays the entire point of what High and Low is saying. But what makes me cringe is that – I don’t think he cares. He made something else.

Despite an impressive cast, Highest 2 Lowest also features some of the worst performances and worst lines in any film I’ve seen this year. Spike should be ashamed! He’s better than this! It seems like all he was doing was going through the motions to shoot the script all so that he can get back to his actual joy of watching basketball games and enjoying his fancy high society big city life. And I say this inoffensively because this is literally in the movie and part of the plot – the most passionate part of this movie is his expression of love for the Yankees and the Nicks (really any NYC sports team) and his hate for any team from Boston. It’s not even his own screenplay, so I can’t even say this is a movie he wanted to make either. It’s written by Alan Fox, stuffed with one-liners and dialogue that would barely be acceptable for a bad daytime TV series. He dumbs down the entire High and Low plot, cuts around crucial moments, and only lets Denzel do his thing because his character (a wealthy record label exec living in a spectacular penthouse) is so snazzy and cool. Or at least that’s what Spike seems to think… The kidnapping isn’t even that thrilling or unsettling because the scenes where they discover this are so poorly conceived and directed I was waiting for everyone to start throwing tomatoes at the screen. And then it just keeps going, getting more & more awful bumbling along.

I do not buy that this movie is purposefully campy. There ain’t no way. I’m starting to think Spike has lost it. He has no idea what he was doing with this. It is unintentionally hilarious. My Cannes screening audience was constantly laughing at how blatantly cringe many scenes are because they are genuinely cringe scenes. It’s so poorly shot, so poorly acted, it even felt like all the performers were going “Is this really want Spike wants? Should we do another take?” in their heads. Alas no, there were no more takes… He let them ham it up and moved on. Because scene after scene it’s some of the most pathetically bad performances as if no one on set really cared about trying to make this movie any good. Only get paid, hang out with Spike, go home. It’s so strange. And it’s a serious topic, too. You cannot convince me that kidnapping and major life choices and family and money are topics that are meant to be campy. No way. Maybe Spike does not understand this because he himself is a wealthy man living in New York City entirely disconnected from all the actual people who make up the city; despite putting them in front of the camera, he’s now unable to relate to them at all.

To top it off, this features one of the worst scores I’ve EVER heard (by Howard Drossin). It sounds like Spike clicked to MakeMeAMovieScore.com and paid $50 for one of the cheesiest, cheapest, most annoying movie scores ever created – probably by AI. It nearly ruins the movie – really. It’s oppressively pompous & loud & moody, using the most cliche orchestral sounds that never fit with the scene on screen. This abysmal score plays constant in the film ruining moment after moment, never allowing for any quiet contemplation. Again, this isn’t something Spike usually does. What happened? There’s another obvious scene that pops up right in the middle during the kidnapping ransom money drop off. Because Spike seems entirely uninspired and creatively lazy making this movie, he decided to just film a Puerto Rican street party. Out of nowhere, Anthony Ramos and Rosie Perez appear in an entirely unnecessary cameo as themselves, and loud Puerto Rican music takes over while he cuts back & forth to a chase scene with men driving black scooters around with the money bag. This feels like it’s directly lifted from some other movie, if not from Spike’s own movies before. Once again, all of this because he really doesn’t care about this screenplay or the point of High and Low or what is going on with the characters. He’d rather party with Puerto Ricans (though, who wouldn’t?).

I could go on and on about everything awful in this movie. But I don’t want to waste my own time because I’d rather think about anything else other than Highest 2 Lowest. For some inexplicable reason, he includes actor Dean Winters (best known as that annoying asshole from the Allstate Insurance TV commercials) as the one White guy detective amongst all of the Black cops working on the kidnapping case. It seems Spike wants to use him as the butt of any of his jokes about racist cops, and/or annoying white dudes who have no idea what they’re doing. Instead he delivers a Golden Raspberry-worthy all-time atrocious performance with deadpan line delivery & stupid quips that are so cringe I’m surprised people aren’t cancelling this movie just because he’s in it. Even the other talented actors he was able to wrangle into this project, including Michael Potts and Wendell Pierce, can’t even get a good line in without looking like Spike suddenly forgot how to direct actors. Denzel is fine, but only because Denzel is just directing himself. He’s a legend and capable of handling his character on his own. All of this amounts to a barely watchable movie, one where every scene is worse than the other, every moment is more annoying than the last, and every plot point is more forgettable than the one before. How is anyone watching this and not wanting to “boo!” loudly at the end? I don’t know.

I would like give this movie one of the lowest ratings possible, but there are two parts of it that prevent me from going that low. First – Jeffery Wright as Denzel’s driver named Paul Christopher is the ONLY good performance in this and he’s the only one actually trying to do something with his character. The only actor in the entire movie with a complex, layered performance that is saying much more than what his lines are saying. And finally – the big finale with A$AP Rocky at the end is actually fun enough and their big scenes are entertaining and it brings it back from being completely dead on arrival. Not everyone will enjoy these moments at the end, because they’re just as cheesy as everything else, but it actually seems like A$AP Rocky understood the assignment. He’s having fun in a entertaining “fuck you” way (it’s part of his character). But still – this movie is asinine. It’s terrible in every possible way it could be. Even if you can’t help watching it, don’t fall for all the faux campiness. Spike made a really bad movie and we shouldn’t be afraid to admit that.

Alex’s Cannes 2025 Rating: 2 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing

Find more posts in: Cannes 25, Review