Spoiler alert! We’re discussing important plot points and the ending of “Highest 2 Lowest” (streaming now on Apple TV+), so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
Do not get in a rap battle with Denzel Washington, unless you want to be served a verbal whupping.
When director Spike Lee teamed for a fifth time with the A-lister on his new thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police drama “High and Low,” the filmmaker figured he’d get some Oscar-caliber acting. The fact that Washington could spit bars like a hip-hop icon was more of a surprise.
That and the fact that Washington actually held his own with Grammy-nominated rapper A$AP Rocky.
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Denzel Washington (left) and A$AP Rocky pose at the New York premiere of Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest.”
“Game recognizes game,” Lee says. “You got the old blood and then you got the young whippersnapper. So it’s playing on a generational level, too.”
“Highest 2 Lowest” stars Washington as David King, a music mogul whose label Stackin’ Hits Records is, as Lee puts it, “not stacking hits no more.” As King moves to take financial control of his label and keep it from merging with another company, he gets a call from a stranger that his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped and being held for a $17.5 million ransom. But by mistake, Trey’s friend Kyle – the boy of King’s longtime associate Paul (Jeffrey Wright) – is the one being held, and King works with the police to pay the culprits and get the kid back.
The mastermind behind it all? That would be up-and-coming ex-con rapper Yung Felon (Rocky), who leads King and the police on a chase through the Bronx but winds up with the money. While King becomes a local legend − “Da Black Panther of Da Bronx” reads one newspaper headline – he still needs to make up for that lost cash.
Because he has “the best ears in the business,” King later realizes that the voice on the phone matches the track on his son’s playlist featuring Felon. He and Paul hear where the “streets” are saying that Felon is located, they find his girlfriend and infant son, and King ultimately tracks him down to a hidden recording studio. Felon confesses that he looked up to King and has wanted to work with him for years, and King gives him a chance, spurring him on to “represent” and “say something.”
Yung Felon (A$AP Rocky) concocts a kidnapping plot to get his idol’s attention in “Highest 2 Lowest.”
Washington went rogue and the impromptu rap battle he starts “was not what was written” in the script, Lee says. “So we’re getting ready to shoot, and I don’t know when it happened, but Denzel was doing research so he started busting bars from Nas’ ‘Illmatic’ album.” Specifically, Washington started doing his own take on “Represent,” saying, “I used to sport Bally’s in Cazals with black frames, now I’m into new chicks, texts and Beck’s.”
Rocky then responds: “I gotta feed the streets, my lady and a newborn kid, and I ain’t tryin’ to go back and do another bid, you dig?”
“Thank God that Rocky was there, because I didn’t know Denzel was going to do that. Rocky didn’t know that, either,” Lee says. “But Rocky was like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna rap? I’m the rapper!’
“When Denzel started going to his battle rapper mode, Rocky was there right with him. I attribute that to Denzel’s genius,” Lee adds. “When you have actors who elevate the scene at the same time, they’re elevating the movie. And this is a classic ‘High Noon’ toe-to-toe showdown-at-the-corral heavyweight fight. The film just takes off.”
How does ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ end?
King tells Felon to “handle his business,” but the young rapper escapes only to be subdued by King on the 4 train. The finale of the movie finds them meeting again in jail, as Felon becomes a streaming sensation beginning a 25-year sentence. He still wants King to sign him so they both can cash in on Felon’s newfound fame, but King rebuffs him, saying he’s started a new, smaller family label and making it clear to Felon that life’s about more than just money.
“The old bloods, they live the life,” Lee says of the ending. “They’re talking from wisdom and knowledge while (Felon and his ilk) are young and you don’t know (anything).”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ rap battle stars Denzel Washington, A$AP Rocky
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