Spike Lee directed Highest 2 Lowest from a screenplay by Alan Fox.
It is an English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Japanese masterpiece High and Low, itself based on Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom.
It is the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington, and the first since Inside Man (2006).
The film also stars Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, ASAP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Princess Nokia, and Ice Spice (in her film debut).
Highest 2 Lowest world premiered out of competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Fest, and was released theatrically in the US by A24 in August as counter-programming.
Though the film received mixed-to-positive reviews, it was a box-office bomb and one o few commercial failures in otherwise Washington’s dazzling careers.
NYC Location: Brooklyn Bridge
Locations:
Brooklyn Side Entrance
Tillary Street & Adams Street
Manhattan Side Entrance
Park Row & Centre Street
Officially opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, across the East River, was the first to connect Manhattan and Brooklyn. As the original steel-wire suspension bridge, it became a symbol of NYC’s strength. Pedestrian walkways are accessible from both sides.
Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, which reunites the director with Denzel Washington, shot a scene on the bridge in which Washington’s music-mogul character walks across it while grappling with moral conflict.
