Highest 2 Lowest

I guess the name of the movie Highest 2 Lowest is a pun on how "good" the movie is, a little high (Denzel and Jeffery's dramatic acting) and A LOT of LOWS (the entire script and poor acting from most of the cast). After watching the original movie High and Low by Akira Kurosawa I was intrigued to check out this remake by Spike Lee but gotta say I'm very disappointed in how far this movie falls short of Kurosawa's classic. In all honesty I don't believe Spike was the right person to even direct such a remake and instead I believe this movie should've been directed by someone like Scorsese who would've made the film the action thriller it should've been instead of this confusing mess that Spike Lee made. I'll rate this movie a 5 out of 10 due to the simple fact that the script is horrible despite Denzel Washington and Jeffery Wright carrying the movie, everyone else seemed like rookie actors who made the movie feel like a made for BET or Lifetime movie. I also have no idea why this movie went over 2 hours, lol I felt compelled to walk out the theater from being so underwhelmed for how cringeworthy the last 10 - 20 minutes of this movie became. I actually would've been more favorable towards this movie had it been shorter, like probably giving this a 6/10 but it just went on for far too long and quickly became a trainwreck to watch, it seemed as if Spike didn't even know how he wanted to end the movie so instead he prolonged it with unnecessary scenes. I believe this movie should've been released directly on Apple TV instead of having a short theatrical run.

This was a "we made it" film. Spike Lee, Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright are far from needing to prove their filmmaking and acting chops, so this was a love letter to New York, Brooklyn and Black art. It's a timely representation of Black men building from the ground up, growing together and being a bridge to the young men (A$AP Rocky) who aspire to become them. The plot fell flat for me, because more could've been done with the characters, especially Jeffrey Wright's role. I watched and became more engrossed in the art collection than the story itself.

Worth a watch especially if you're African American. A lot of the jokes and writing are geared towards our specific culture and will be more relatable/relevant to us. I appreciated the message at the end of the film about modern day rap music and rap culture. Mostly very strong cast except for Pam, if I'm being honest she was the only weak link and the editing didn't do her any favors. Speaking of editing the editing could have been much better, the writing could have been way better he needed a team of people to review his script, star directors like spike lee get way too much creative freedom and aren't held accountable enough for subpar work in my opinion. ASAP Rocky did a beautiful job he had a very complex and real character that could have easily fallen into a stereotypical cliched performance but he brought a lot of humanity to it. Cinematography was okay. Production design looked very VFX even the view from the penthouse looked like a iPad screen. Denzel did what he was supposed to do. He's a always a joy to watch but he deserved a better script and production quality. Overall not bad. But I wouldn't recommend paying money for it in theatres. Wait till it streams.

The overall good reviews suckered me into giving this a chance but it was a major letdown. I haven't rolled my eyes and thought "this is so cringe" so many times in a movie before. TERRIBLE editing and pacing. Very boring...jumping around skipping crucial scenes you'd expect to see. It seemed like it was written by a 13 year old. Some very bad acting...almost walked out early on but was hoping for a payoff that never really comes. Out of the whole 2+ hours there was maybe like 5 minutes of what I would call good or interesting choices. It's so over the top and cheesy, including most of the music that is getting undeserved praise. A lot of times it doesn't fit with what's happening on the screen much at all. A24 should be ashamed of being attached to this.

If you're a big fan of spike lee, you'll probably love it. Maybe again you'll probably be disappointed. In my opinion, wasn't bad but it could've been great. It felt kinda dragged, overall you got Denzel, asap rocky did solid.

You can see asap was very into his lines, the scenes between him and Denzel were good.

Catch it at home and have a sit back on the couch with some popcorn and pizza and enjoy. It's in select theaters, feel free to try to catch it otherwise it'll be available to stream in 2 weeks.