A Simplistic Review I Highest 2 Lowest

There comes a time in a director’s timeline where they begin to contemplate what’s really set them apart from other directors.

Spielberg has directed some of the biggest films of all time, Tarantino borrowed from the best of what he knew and created what you might call a nearly perfect filmography, and Scorcese all but created the greatest mob epics we’ve ever seen.

Spike Lee is a filmmaker that is just as diverse (if not more) than his contemporaries but while people constantly like to crib the works of Tarantino, Spielberg and Scorcese, not many, if any, can recreate a Spike Lee Joint. They are a REFLECTION of the city that gave him life; New York.

In Lee’s latest ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ it brings him back to Brooklyn with one of his greatest collaborators, the omnipotent Denzel Washington, and not only creates a film that is great, but also pays homage to his home and how a borough like Brooklyn is just as important as the actors on the screen.

Washington is in rare form. He takes the swag he worked on for three films in ‘The Equalizer’ series and seamlessly works in his best from ‘Mo’ Better Blues’ and ‘American Gangster.’

His penultimate and final showdown with the film’s antagonist is a work of art. It’s intense and funny.

‘Highest’ might not get the top grades from critics that hold Lee’s other films like ‘Do The Right Thing’ and ‘Malcolm X,’ in such high regard, and that’s fine. Unlike those two films ‘Highest’ is more in the vein of a film like ‘25th Hour’ (which I think is severely underrated in the Lee filmography) because while the cast does their job, it’s Lee’s command of the city he loves so much that creates a world where anything can happen.

To Yankees fans on the 4 Train, to the Puerto Rican Day Parade, to the view across the Brooklyn Bridge looking OVER Manhattan, ‘Highest’ is a film where a director leaves it all on the screen and shows us how to make a film that is a tribute to not only Akira Kurosawa, but to filmmaking itself.