Spike Lee's New Joint stars Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky and is a crime thriller extravaganza
And we have a trailer!
Everyone!!! Gather round!!! We have a new Spike Lee joint! Rejoice!
Maybe you knew this already if you monitored the premieres at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it played out of competition. But maybe I’m the bringer of this good news in your life, and for that… you’re welcome.
The film is called Highest 2 Lowest, and it is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low, which, fun fact, was based on Ed McBain’s 1959 novel King’s Ransom: An 87th Precinct Mystery. The film is put out by Apple and A24, and it stars Denzel Washington, A$AP Rocky, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Dean Winters, John Douglas Thompson, and Ice Spice.
Although Spike directed Denzel’s son John David in BlacKkKlansman in 2018, this is the first time he and Denzel have worked together since 2006’s Inside Man. In this contemporary re-imagining of the story, Denzel plays a high-powered executive whose teenage son is kidnapped by A$AP Rocky and held for ransom.
The film will hit theaters on August 15 before arriving on Apple TV+ on September 5.
Here’s the trailer!
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
