Spike Lee just released the trailer for his upcoming film Highest 2 Lowest. While Denzel Washington’s name is enough to turn heads, the legendary director is making sure audiences know there’s another performance they need to watch for: A$AP Rocky’s.
In an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Lee revealed he was floored by the rapper’s acting chops and the way he matched energy with one of the greatest actors of our time.
“Don’t sleep on A$AP,” Lee told Fallon. “In this film, Denzel and A$AP go toe-to-toe. And what’s interesting is that even before I got involved with this film, I always thought that A$AP looked like he could be Denzel’s son. They had a big resemblance. And so when you see it on the screen, it has an element of father and son.”
The resemblance might be uncanny, but Lee said it’s Rocky’s ability to hold his own opposite Washington that will impress moviegoers the most.
“I’ve done five films with Denzel, and a lot of times when he’s in a scene with somebody, they just get overwhelmed. He’s one of the world’s greatest living actors today. But A$AP wasn’t having that. Toe to toe. I mean, they were going at it.”
Lee and Washington’s partnership is decades deep, with Highest 2 Lowest marking their fifth collaboration following Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man. The two didn’t even realize it had been nearly two decades since their last project together until someone else pointed it out.
“It’s been 18 years since we worked together. We didn’t know it. We didn’t know until someone said it,” Lee explained. “But it wasn’t like we had to reintroduce ourselves.”
Highest 2 Lowest is a reinterpretation, not a remake, of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low. Lee says his version is infused with his own cinematic language while still honoring the masterful tension and social commentary of the original.
The trailer teases a tense, high-stakes story, with Denzel and Rocky’s characters locked in a psychological and moral chess match. For Lee, seeing Rocky rise to the challenge of acting alongside Denzel is part of what makes this sequel special.
Highest 2 Lowest hits theaters on August 15 before arriving on Apple TV+ on September 5.
Photo Credit: Instagram – OfficialSpikeLee
