Denzel Washington gives an Oscar-caliber performance in Highest 2 Lowest,his fifth collaboration with director Spike Lee. As a powerful music executive facing a deadly moral dilemma, Washington travels from dazzling penthouse heights to gritty housing projects in an urban update of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 classic High and Low, itself an adaptation of the novel "King's Ransom" by Evan Hunter. And the film lives up to its title, intermittently squandering brilliant character development and tension with uneven pacing. Scenes linger for artistic effect, highlighting their cultural vibrancy. But they prolong an excessive runtime that could have been leaner and sharper.

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