I walked out of “Highest 2 Lowest” thinking, “This is cinema.”

Sure, it’s not a perfect film, but it has an interesting arc and blends strong elements of the thriller, action and family drama genres, while adding a bit of humor here and there. Something filmmaker Spike Lee is adept at doing.

I then spent the next 15 minutes hearing how much my husband disliked it. I listened carefully for things I agree with and points that I can see, especially from him, with our differing preferences in movies.

An important thing we agreed on was the score, especially in the first half. It is distracting and intense in a few scenes, making it hard to hear dialogue at a couple points.

While my husband didn’t have much nice to say about “Highest 2 Lowest,” I really enjoyed most of it.

I have seen most of Lee’s films, and “Highest 2 Lowest” is more or less what I expect from him: love letter after love letter to New York City (including the opening title font in Knicks colors), a jazzy score, interspersing the narrative with cultural touchstones like art, a scene or two of characters looking at the camera and some artsy cinematography.

This movie is dripping in all of those things, and at times, the style definitely overtakes the substance. But one thing alone prevents that from happening completely: Denzel Washington.

He plays David King, a record label mogul who is an enigma in the entertainment industry. He is in the middle of a business deal that would see him take back control of his label — at a hefty price — when he gets a devastating phone call that his teenage son has been kidnapped. The kidnapper is demanding a large ransom that would take the business deal off the table.

There are a lot of twists and turns throughout “Highest 2 Lowest” that I don’t want to spoil. I think it’s best if you go into this movie not knowing too much about the plot.

Washington has gravitas and charisma oozing off of him in this role. In addition to his own exemplary work here, he elevates those around him, including in his at times tender and at times hilarious moments with Jeffrey Wright, who plays David’s driver and oldest friend, Paul.

The later scenes Washington shares with A$AP Rocky are also quite compelling, and I am excited to see this beloved rapper in more acting roles.

To be perfectly honest, though, most of the other performances were not great, slipping a little to hard into the melodrama that the film this was based on, Akira Kurosawa‘s “High and Low,” would find more common in its 1963 era.

I would be fine with this if “Highest 2 Lowest” were a full-blown melodrama, but like I said up top, it’s really trying hard to fit into more modern genres, which make the melodramatic (teetering on cheesy) performances from some of the actors fall flat.

As I started composing my own thoughts about this movie, I was struck by how I had so many mixed feelings about it, and the last film to really do that for me was fellow auteur Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Megalopolis.”

Lee was even part of a Q&A that I saw with Coppola before my screening of “Megalopolis” last year.

Both of these films have renowned auteurs taking big swings in what I’m sure were passion projects for them both. While not all of the swings in both of these movies are home runs, I still stand by my initial thought at the end of “Highest 2 Lowest.” This is cinema.

I would much rather see these kind of passion projects than the endless stream of subpar action movies and unnecessary remakes/sequels that we’ve been inundated with over the last couple of years.

Some folks may counter by saying that movies like “Megalopolis” underperformed on most metrics (which I agree with), and even my “Highest 2 Lowest” review gives it a middling rating. But “Sinners” was a passion project for filmmaker Ryan Coogler, and that turned out incredibly well on every metric.

If the industry funds more original films like I hope it will do after the success of “Sinners” and other original horror movies in the last couple years, I am fine if for every middling “Megalopolis” or “Highest 2 Lowest” we get a spectacular “Sinners.” To me, it is worth the risk.

Rating: 3.5/5