Highest 2 Lowest

Directed by Spike Lee (R)

★★★

"A new Spike Lee movie is still a calendar-clearing event," said in Rolling Stone . The latest addition to his canonical but up-and-down oeuvre bears the title Highest 2 Lowest yet "falls ironically right smack dab in the middle." Denzel Washington, in his fifth Spike Lee joint, stars as David King, a once-mighty music mogul who is pursuing a crowning business deal when he's told that his teenage son has been kidnapped. Despite an intriguing plot twist—the discovery that the kidnapper grabbed the son of David's right-hand man and driver—the next hour "risks being sluggish." Still, "when Spike wants to turn it up, he rises to the occasion."

After the movie's "bafflingly rough start," said in NYMag.com , the action moves to the str

See Full Page