Spike Lee and Denzel Washington are two of the most iconic filmmakers in modern Hollywood. The pair have made some equally iconic movies together. The new film Highest 2 Lowest marks their fifth film together, though it’s shockingly been nearly two decades since the last one.
While seeing Spike and Denzel work together again is certainly a topic worthy of note, and many have done that, the other thing that makes their project on the 2025 movie schedule interesting to me is the way Spike Lee used it to reference another friend and collaborator, Prince.
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington Had No Idea They Hadn’t Worked Together In Nearly Two Decades
It’s been 35 years since Denzel Washington and Spike Lee made their first movie together, Mo’ Better Blues. From there, the pair would go on to make Malcolm X, one of Denzel's best movies, He Got Game, and Inside Man. It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been almost 20 years since Inside Man came out, and it seems that Lee and Washington didn’t realize so much time had passed either, as Lee told the Los Angeles Times…
Denzel and I didn't realize that it's been 18 years since 'Inside Man.’ We only found out when journalists told us.
To be fair, both Lee and Washington have remained pretty busy for the last 18 years, so time probably flew by. They’ve both been racking up the awards by making great movies with others. And the pair probably see each other enough and talk about working together often enough that they simply didn’t do the math on how long it had actually been.
Highest 2 Lowest’s Title Is Inspired By Prince
Based on the critical response to Highest 2 Lowest, it’s been worth the wait to see Denzel Washington and Spike Lee work together again, but there’s another collaborator of Spike Lee’s who also had something of a hand in making the new film, Prince.
Highest 2 Lowest is a remake, or in Lee’s words, a “reinterpretation” of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Lee says the twist on the title, Highest 2 Lowest, “is a shout-out to my brother Prince.” Prince would frequently use numbers in place of words in his song and album titles like “I would Die 4 U” or “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Lee and Prince were friends for decades, with Lee directing one of Prince’s music videos in the early 1990s, “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” which also used the number/word swap style. Prince provided the soundtrack to Lee’s movie, Girl 6, five years later. Lee also included an unreleased Prince song in BlacKkKlansman.
So Highest 2 Lowest is, in more than one way, a collaboration between Spike Lee and his friends, who are both great talents themselves.
