Pop Culture Happy Hour - Highest 2 Lowest

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Spike Lee's new crime thriller Highest 2 Lowest reunites him with his favorite leading man, Denzel Washington. The film is based on Akira Kurosawa’s classic High and Low, and it’s a tense story about a very rich man with a very big problem. Part morality play and part action movie, Washington plays a music mogul who confronts questions of responsibility and power when he believes his son has been kidnapped.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Spike Lee's new crime thriller, Highest to Lowest, reunites him with his favorite leading man, Denzel Washington, for a story about a very rich man with a very big problem. In a tense story that's part morality play and part action movie, Washington's music mogul confronts questions of responsibility and power. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about highest to lowest on pop culture happy hour from NPR. Joining us today is Soraya Nadia McDonnell. She's a cultural critic, journalist, and the senior criticism editor for The Rumpus. Welcome back, Soraya. Hello, hello. Nice to be here again. Absolutely. Glad to have you. In highest to lowest, Denzel Washington plays David King, the powerful owner of a storied record label that isn't quite as hot as it once was,

but it's made him very rich. One day, someone kidnaps his teenage son, Trey, and holds him for ransom. Only, it turns out there's been a mix-up. They didn't take Tray. They took his buddy, Kyle, the son of David's closest friend and driver, Paul. He's played by Jeffrey Wright. But even when the mistake is discovered, the kidnapper still demands the money, many millions of dollars. But if it's about me, then you can't expect me to pay $17.5 million for somebody else's son if it's about me. But then his blood is going to be on your hands then. How you want it? No, man.

David is trying to regain control of the business he spent his life building, and he desperately needs every penny to make that happen. But how can he refuse his friend and his son and everyone else who will inevitably think it's his fault if this kid who isn't his doesn't make it? Highest to Lowest is directed by Spike Lee, and it's based on the Akira Kurosawa film High and Low, which is itself based on the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom. It's in theaters now. it arrives on Apple TV Plus in September. Aisha, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of this one? Yeah.

I mean, I am just so happy that in the year of 2025, we're still getting new Spikely joints. You know, he had a rough patch throughout a lot of the 2010s. And I think his last several movies, starting with Black Klansman and then, of course, the very, very great DeFive Bloods from 2020, he seems to be on a role here. And sure, is it a risk to, you know, try and take on and reimagine one of the most acclaimed films that has ever been made? A movie that has had, like, you know, 60 plus years of existing. Yeah, it's a risk. When Spike did his remake of Old Boy, it did not go well. I think people should expect that this goes much better than that.

And I can understand easily why you would want to remake high and low because it does translate, I think, so well. across cultures, across generations, it's still very relevant. And I love seeing this twist on it. And while I have some caveats that we will probably get into, I think overall I'm just happy to see him and happy to see him working again with Denzel. It's magic. It's very much magic. Yeah. All right. Soraya, how about you? What do you think? Likewise. It's really wonderful, I think, to see Spike this far into his career still making work that feels like he's excited about filmmaking. I think part of that is because he's been, you know, a Curacao fanboy for such a long time. And to see him have both, you know, the means, the resources, the talent to kind of dig into those things is really fantastic.

And I will say it's also just wonderful now living in Brooklyn. And I went to his screening earlier this week and realized that I was looking at David King's building and sort of like looking, looking for the penthouses we're going across the bridge from the car. I think this is actually one of my favorite establishing shots of Spike's career is the opening to this movie. And you get these incredible, just expansive shots of Brooklyn, of the Dumbo Clock Tower. And it really just sets the tone for, you know, the sort of moguldom that David inhabits, just surveying this man's life, you know, and the way he sees himself as this king of New York with this incredible view of Manhattan, you know, from his gorgeous Brooklyn penthouse with the, with the

Cahendi Wiley's and the Baskiats hanging on the walls. Yep, yep, yep, yep. There's just a lot of stuff to sort of tickle the eyes and the ears in this film. Yeah. That was really my first reaction is, you know, the first thing you see in this film is those wonderful shots of New York with this Norm Lewis rendition of Oh, What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma, which I think is such a fabulous choice because it really harkens back to that song really stands for a man who is essentially alone on this vast expanse of land and is seeing, you know, the world is stretched out before me. This is my dream of, you know, when Oklahoma was still a lot. territory and, you know, he's a cowboy. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day.

To translate that into this setting with David looking at New York from his penthouse, and those shots are just freaking gorgeous. They're just gorgeous. Makes so much sense and yet is so inventive. I was excited about this movie because my favorite Spike Lee movie, not necessarily the best, but my favorite Spikely movie is Inside Man, which is the 2006 bank heist hostage situation movie, which also has Denzel Washington as well as Clive Owen and Jody Foster and Christopher Plummer. And I adore that movie.

I've rewatched it a bunch of times. And so I was really interested in seeing him doing a crime movie. I'm always up for like a good Spikely crime movie. And I just love how early in his career a lot of the sort of mainstsie. stream press stuff about him was very kind of issue focused and very like he makes important movies. And it's not that that wasn't true and isn't true. Like I felt about watching the fablemen's with Spielberg where even if I didn't care that much about that story, you just look at it and you're like, well, a guy knows how to shoot a movie. Yeah. Absolutely. And over and over again, I just thought

so much about that the making of this film, the use of music in this film is just so smart. It has a kind of what I would consider like an old Hollywood orchestral score for much of it. You know, the cliche would have been to use a lot of hip hop. So there's anything wrong with that, but he makes this other choice. I have seen so many much lesser directors of much more poorly thought out pieces be like, it's about crime. It's about quote unquote, please imagine the largest air quotes in the world, an urban setting. Therefore, everything must be hip-hop. I love a big orchestra. I love a big orchestral score. There's this dietic use of Eddie Palmieri and his group because they set a piece of it at the Puerto Rican Day parade, which is so smart and it works so well. For a movie that's about music, I adored the use of music. So many beautiful shots.

I just really sat back and appreciated the artfulness of this as much as the story. Yeah. I think I have to disagree slightly or push back a little bit on the use of music here because there are so many things about Spike that make him so singular. And he is an autore. Like when you're watching a Spikely movie, you always know it's a Spikely movie. And that's both a good thing. And sometimes it can be a frustrating thing. And he's often worked with, you know, Terrence Blanchard.

Here he's working with Howard Drossin. And one of the things that I've always kind of struggled with with Spikely movies is that. the fact that he often uses orchestral music where it doesn't seem like it should be there. Like, it's just, you're having, like, a normal conversation. It just kind of is, like, rumbling underneath and it can get kind of distracting. I guess I was questioning sort of how Spike feels about hip hop today based on the way this movie pans out. Yes, that's very fair. Music has always been integral to his filmmaking. Like, this is known. And he's embraced hip hop in the past. Of course, you have him working with public enemy multiple times.

movies. He's not someone who does not like hip hop, but I also wonder how he feels about hip hop now. And the way it plays out here and the way the moralizing that often comes with Spike is like very, your mileage may vary. I wasn't sure who this David King character was to put, like, was he supposed to be a Quincy Jones type? You know, it's New York. So Jayzie immediately comes to mind. And in fact, during one scene, he looks basically, he's dressed like Jayzie. circa the Black Album era, you know, the blueprint. I mean, on the one hand, it feels like the score of this film was, I mean, it is very much like in your face.

And in some ways, it kind of reminds me of those threads that he was pulled on for a long time with Terence Blantard, where you could kind of hear the Aaron Copeland influences and a lot of Terrence's work, right? You've got these big, brassy measures. you can sort of hear these influences coming through again. But it is interesting, like you say, Aisha, I do wonder, yeah, how does he feel about hip hop right now? Because you really do, you get sort of closer and closer to spike kind of approaching old man yelling at cloud a little bit through Denzel in this film. At times, yeah.

A little bit of pull up your pants going on here. A little bit of pull up your pants. But it's so pleasurable. Like, I kind of want to give it to him. If that makes sense. Yes. When you point this out, it does make me realize that you don't hear a lot of like what music does David really love. Right.

You sort of at one point very close to the end, you do. You hear like an example of the kind of music he really loves. But other than that, he talks a lot about how much he cares about his record company, how much he cares about the art that he has tried to nurture. and in fact about Soraya made mention of the Baskiats and so forth in the apartment. And I think the first thing you see when they show his apartment is this painting of Tony Morrison. And they go way out of their way to sort of try to give a location of his artistic sensibility via description. But then you don't hear necessarily a lot of examples of it other than, like I said, at the very end, you kind of see him get lit up by hearing an artist.

But other than that, like, what is the music that he loves? I think that's a really fair question. It's so curious that, like, he is this music mogul who, you know, is supposed to have, like, tapped into the culture in many ways and foster that culture. It's like, does we live in an alternative universe where he also, like, worked with Marvin Gay and CB1? Like, because all of the art is exactly, like, Spike is speaking to us through the Mizonset. through the entire like setup. Right, right, right. And it kind of reminded me actually of his exhibit

that was at the Brooklyn Museum for a while. But I also saw it at the Academy Museum. Like they had like a section dedicated to Spike that he like, he was just like, here are all the things that I collected artifacts from Hollywood. It kind of reminded me of that where he's like speaking to us through his love of culture and cultivating culture. It was interesting to me because I was just like, oh, we see all of these artists who were all familiar with.

But we don't see any artists who he might have worked with who, like, would be on the wall. But at the same time, he populates the film with actual rappers from this generation and younger. You've got Ice Spice showing up. You've got Princess Nokia. You have Aesop Rocky. So it is an interesting, delicate walk. But I say all this, and yet I agree with you, Soraya, where I'm just like, it's chewy. It doesn't quite all work.

But also, I'm still, like, okay with it. Like, I'm giving him a pass. Like, there are some ways that David King does feel. very JZ-coded. And almost like, you know, these big names that he clearly admires, whether it's Aretha or Stevie or James Brown or whoever, they almost feel sort of like a list of greatest hits of artists that Jay-Z would sample to wrap over. Yes.

I think it's so interesting because when I was watching this, you know, like I said, I went to this really hoping for the kind of like twisty thriller story that I really love and that I think inside man is, and it isn't really that. It's not as thematically complex, I think, as I thought that it might be. I don't think it's as morally complex as I thought it might be, because obviously he's presented with this. They sort of suggest, are you going to nearly bankrupt yourself for this other kid who is not your kid, right? But is the kid of Paul, played by Jeffrey Wright, who, as always, I love in this. I think he's so good and gives this story, a whole other level of both kind of humanity and humor, which is so welcome.

Right now, I'm asking you for everything. I'm asking you for my life. Now, you ain't asking me for life. Right now you're asking me for $17.5 million. That's all people do is ask me for stuff. Can you give me a son? Can you get me? They just want me to pay. What I wound up appreciating was just like looking at it and being like, oh, okay, so this is the conversation he decides to actually show you. And this is the conversation where It's silent and you're just seeing it through a window, you know, which I think he makes really interesting decisions about. And you're both kind of circling around this, I think, in a way that's really helpful to me, is that I always appreciate the fact that he is a guy with a kind of a pancultural interest in lots of different things. Oh, yes.

That he is so interested in what you would consider. And again, even more air quotes, like high culture and pop culture and sports. And lots of different kinds of music and musical theater. I love kind of he draws from such an incredibly wide catalog of influences and references. It's always just fun to watch that happen. Like I said, I think that Puerto Rican Day parade stuff is so smart and works so well. And also just gives you your chance to listen to great music. Eddie Palmieri, by the way, died earlier this month.

And this is a great opportunity to just go and see this group and how amazing they are. Again, it's such an appreciation of New York, as so many of his movies are. I enjoyed it a lot, even though not necessarily for the reasons I was hoping to slash expecting to, maybe. That sequence, the Puerto Rican Day Parade sequence, was great because it made me miss that aspect of living in New York. I'm also just so glad you brought up Jeffrey Wright again because he really was, as much as I loved watching Denzel. work. And he himself is also kind of in back in a groove, I think, after maybe, you know, between this, Macbeth and Gladiary 2, even though Gladiary 2 was not a good movie, he was great in that. But Jeffrey Wright is so, so good here. And I kind of wish he factored more into the story. And I think

that's another thing I struggled with is where Spike and, you know, the script itself kind of ultimately comes down on this idea of like black wealth and the responsibility. we have to that. Definitely could have more energy in that conflict. Yeah. You know, between them. He's kind of ambivalent

about his own money, possibly. That's the thing. That's exactly. That was what I was thinking the whole time. I was like, this is some very Oprah-esque,

like, Tyler Perry-esque. And I mean that, not in terms of the way Tyler Perry directs, but in terms of this, like, ethos or this idea of, like,

black wealth being an insulator against actual criticism. And I feel as though I wanted more of that, like, friction between Jeffrey Wright's character and Denzel's character because that is the thing, right? Like, at the end of the day, he's, like, Jeffrey Wright's character is still the chauffeur and not just the chauffeur. We also learn that he is an ex-con. He is such a rich character and that dynamic is so fascinating. And it felt to me like a sort of missed opportunity. Like I wanted, even like inside man, amazing.

But it has that like Nazi subplot that I think doesn't pull punches in the same way that this movie seems to pull punches. There are parts where he starts to sort of creep up to it, right? Like, but it's very diffuse. We can contrast the way the NYPD treats, you know, this man who is the king of New York, a titan of industry. Everybody knows them, you know, when he calls, they come running. versus like the way they're treating Jeffrey's character very rude, very dismissive. Yeah. Not really interested in anything this man has to say or the care that he is showing for his own son. And that classed difference, right, even intra racially, like among black folks of the treatment from the police.

Yeah. Those things I think are sort of like they're outwardly acknowledged. They're sort of hat tipped to. Right. there's not a lot of kind of plot energy that goes into them. And there were times when I sort of thought, like I said, that more energy was going to go into the conflict over what to do. As I mentioned in the intro, you know, Jeffrey Wright is playing the best friend slash driver. And there's a very fair question of like, is that a thing? Like, what is the relationship between these two men and how does it work? Because there's a moment when David is talking to another one of his business associates. And he starts to say some really appalling things. about like maybe I just let this go and people will forgive me and people will get over it. And it's like if you're really willing to dig into that about this guy, maybe that's like a more kind of morally complicated movie. And that does not really turn out to be where they want to go with this story. Yeah. I at least liked the fact that we get a moment between David and his son, Trey, where Trey is just like,

This is like another thing that I think Spike really seemed, even if we don't really fully understand his feelings on music, we do seem to get a clear-eyed view of his take on social media and how, and the press and how that can affect your image. And that moment between him and his son where the son is just like, this is not just affecting you, this is affecting me. I am being blamed for my best friends kidnapping. You need to work this out. money is just money. It's both a very, you know, younger person, when a younger person may feel and think, but also he's right. He's absolutely right. And I liked that dynamic. And all of that seems to happen in the first half. And in the second half, it kind of just like. It diffuses. Yeah. It does it all there for you to sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I don't know. This is just, it's such a fun time. Yeah. And I will say that that one song that Aesop Rocky has features in. the end is it's a bob. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I was like, oh, this is catchy, you know? Maybe not as deep as I wanted it to be, but it's fun. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I think we all enjoyed it with certain caveats. Tell us what you think about highest to lowest. Find us on

Facebook at facebook.com slash pc-hh and on letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Soraya, Nadia McDonald, Aisha Harris. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Jenei Morris, and edited by Mike Katzoff. Our showrunner is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes. We'll see you all next time.