This 7-Year-Old Crime Drama with 94% on RT is Perfect for Spike Lee Fans

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• What is Blindspotting About?

• Blindspotting Deserves More Love

• Blindspotting is Perfect for Spike Lee Fans

Despite breaking into Hollywood movie scene from over 40 years ago, Spike Lee still remains one of the most relevant filmmakers in the entire world. Whether he's hilariously and flippantly voicing his opinions on contemporary movies, celebrating New York Knicks victories in the streets of New York, or releasing trailers for his newest projects, the man consistently proves that he has a distinct knack for maintaining relevance through different eras. With the teaser trailer for Highest 2 Lowest officially out online, Spike Lee is as relevant as he has ever been, and it has inspired many die-hard fans to take a deep dive into his hard-hitting and eternally relevant filmography.

While the catalog of Spike Lee films is vast, varied, and ongoing, many fans who have already completed his illustrious filmography are left wondering: What's next? The harsh truth of the matter is that no new filmmaker can fully capture the one-of-a-kind stylistic substance of Lee's films, but a few have come close. The best film for those anxiously awaiting Highest 2 Lowest is Blindspotting, a highly underrated crime comedy from 2018 that was directed by one of the best up-and-comers in the modern Hollywood landscape.

What is Blindspotting About?

Blindspotting is a truly impressive feat of tonal shifts that manages to elegantly deliver a message without being too preachy. The film is a powerful, character-driven drama that follows Collin (Daveed Diggs), a young Black man who was recently released from prison, as he returns to live in his increasingly gentrified hometown of Oakland, California. Collin is in his final three days of probation and is desperately trying to stay out of trouble.

Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs wrote the screenplay for Blindspotting during the mid-2000s. After years of delays, the film finally entered production in 2017.

To stay out of trouble, he takes a job working for a moving company alongside his lifelong best friend, Miles (Rafael Casal), a hot-tempered white man with many struggles of his own. Collin tries to keep his head down and focus on a fresh start, but is increasingly exposed to dangerous situations that force him to confront the issues of race, identity, class, and injustice that haunt his community.

Two key events catapult Collin back into a life of chaos and crime. One night, while driving home past his parole curfew, he witnesses a police officer shoot an unarmed black man. Around the same time, Miles' anger issues begin to take control, as he purchases a handgun and begins picking fights. This traumatic event, and the constant anxiety of Miles potentially dragging him back into the life of crime, haunts him. What follows from this point is an emotional journey as Collin wrestles with how to move past trauma and attempts to forge a stable life.

Blindspotting is bold and brave in its delivery. The film dabbles in freestyle rap and spoken word and is heavily stylized in an attempt to elegantly deliver its message. Over the course of the brief 95-minute runtime , the film turns into an intense and deeply emotional conversation about privilege, perception, identity, and the importance of speaking up. Thanks to the bold experimentation of the filmmaking team, the film confronts systemic oppression and injustice while somehow remaining intimate, grounded, and relatable to all people regardless of race.

Blindspotting Deserves More Love

Blindspotting is somehow a forgotten gem from the stacked cinematic year that was 2018. 2018 was characterized by blockbuster smash hits like Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Ready Player One , but it was also full of critically acclaimed indie gems like Sorry to Bother You, Support the Girls and Dragged Across Concrete Despite being a golden year for underdog stories, Blindspotting went largely unrecognized and is still struggling to be included in "Best of 2018" conversations to this very day.

The film doesn't lack star power either, which makes its obscurity all the more confusing. The screenplay for Blindspotting was written by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, who was fresh off of his performance as Marquis de Lafayette in Broadway's Hamilton. Not only this, but the film also featured other Hamilton stars, such as Jasmine Cephas Jones, and was directed by promising debut director Carlos López Estrada, who had made a name for himself as a music video director in the seven years preceding. Blindspotting <failed>

Despite not being widely known by the public, Blindspotting has consistently received rave reviews on all movie platforms. The film currently boasts an incredibly impressive 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and an 86% rating from audiences. The consensus among both critics and fans is that the highlights of the film are Daveed Diggs' stellar leading performance and the seamless blending of buddy comedy with harsh drama. This critical success led to a fairly successful, but brief, run at the box office. Against a budget of $1.2 million, Carlos López Estrada's film managed to more than triple its profits with a gross of around $5 million during its 23-week cinematic run.

The success of Blindspotting at the box office even led to further opportunities, as the film eventually inspired a spin-off series of the same name. The series retained much of the original involved cast and crew, with Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs attached as executive producers and writers. The spin-off series primarily followed Jasmine Cephas Jones' Ashley six months after the events of the film, as she is forced to move in with her ex-boyfriend Miles' mother after he was unexpectedly incarcerated.

Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal returned to the screen eventually during the show's run, but the bulk of the series keenly focused on Ashley's emotional arc. Despite rave initial reviews that closely resembled the reaction to the film, the Blindspotting The series lasted only two seasons before it was unceremoniously canceled in September 2023.

Blindspotting is Perfect for Spike Lee Fans

The connection between Blindspotting and Spike Lee's catalog seems obvious on the surface, but there is even more connective tissue between them than meets the eye. The most obvious connection between the two is the subject matter. Blindspotting While it dabbles in buddy comedy and high-stakes action, it is first and foremost an examination of American institutional racism, injustice, and the connection between class and race. Spike Lee's films are no different.

<failed> his 1986 directorial debut, She's Gotta Have It Spike Lee has been toeing the line between hilarious comedy and important and poignant emotional messaging. Films like Do the Right Thing, BlacKkKlansman, and especially Bamboozled have mastered this balance, and until 2018, it seemed like no other filmmaker could manage it. Blindspotting is hilarious and harrowing, and will have even the most stoic viewer teary-eyed from both laughter and desperation.

Spike Lee is the recipient of an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay ( BlackKklansman) , an honorary Academy Award, and a Student Academy Award ( Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

A second reason why Blindspotting is essential for fans of Spike Lee comes from the film's third genre label: Crime. Spike Lee kicked off his career with subtle comedies and masterful explorations of racial politics, but real fans know that he took a bit of a pit stop in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is commonly referred to as Spike Lee's crime period. Films like Inside Man, 25th Hour and Clockers demonstrated that Lee was anything but a one-note filmmaker. While not every fan of Lee's work looks upon this era kindly, those who do will be overjoyed with the genre blend that makes up Blindspotting.

Carlos López Estrada's film perfectly combines the racial politics and incisive analysis of Lee's early work with the incredibly unique style of his crime phase. As tensions rise and violence begins to take over Collin's life once again, the buddy comedy fades away, making way for a high-stakes crime thriller. Blindspotting is particularly perfect for those anticipating the Denzel Washington-led Spike Lee joint Highest 2 Lowest While he didn't quite do it in the 2000s, Spike Lee seems to be inching towards combining his crime period with his early period, but Blindspotting will have to scratch that itch while everyone waits.

As 2025 reaches its midpoint, fans have become increasingly impatient for Spike Lee’s next cinematic chapter. While they wait, they should look no further than Blindspotting , which will stand forever as both a timely reminder of Lee’s endless cultural impact and a masterful work in its own right. The film captures the spirit of a Spike Lee joint without copying it, offering an unflinching and heavily stylized look into a world that is all too relatable. Dynamic storytelling blends seamlessly with evergreen social commentary as the story jumps from comedy to drama to crime. Highest 2 Lowest inches closer, fans would be remiss if they didn’t give Blindspotting a try.