Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest”

Have you ever seen "High and Low," the 1963 Akira Kurosawa movie it is based on?  It's wonderful, and as its fan I looked forward to seeing what Spike Lee would do in remaking it.  Other than the intrusive and inappropriate soundtrack through at least the first half of the film I loved Lee's flamboyant approach to the material, and the resulting shifts from Japanese to African American characters, Tokyo to NYC (emphasizing Brooklyn and the Bronx) and the shoe business to contemporary music fit the story well.  

What works against the film is the last thing you'd expect to: Denzel is miscast.  His strength has always been his blue-collar roots.  Here we are supposed to buy him as a person on top of the world, gliding through society at its pinnacle - a Quincy Jones or Jay-Z type figure, the one everything revolves around - and he never pulls it off.  He has no chemistry at all with the actress who plays his wife and is a shadow of his own Troy Maxson in his dealings with his son. The kidnapping that sets the film's action in motion loses much of its dramatic weight as a result. The actors playing the wife and son fail to make an impression.

This is unfortunate, as everyone around them is great.  All of the theater actors you mention make the most of their roles, with Wright providing the bulk of the gravitas.  A$AP Rocky, who you did not mention (I guess because he isn't a theater actor), is also terrific, and brings Denzel to full life in their confrontation scene. What follows is, alas, anti-climactic.

I would still call it a film well-worth seeing, thanks to the many superb supporting performances and Lee's visual panache, but I hope it leads people to revisit "High and Low."

Nor are they trying to be, nor has anyone asserted that they are. What they HAVE done is turn a lot of people on to those artists. 

 

I enjoyed the movie a lot. High highs and low lows, as with most of Spike's output this millennium. The love for this city is so palpable. I liked the first rethought spin on HIGH AND LOW's final scene so much that I was pretty disappointed when they recreated the scene more literally. 

Updated On: 9/30/25 at 01:50 PM

I thought the movie was not ultimately successful but I do not get the point in comparing the two movies. It's as much based on Kings Ransom as it is High & Low. If you thought Spike Lee was trying to be Kurosawa or Washington was trying to be Mifune, I feel like you watched a different movie than me. The reality is NO ONE is Kurosawa. Also. No one is Spike lee. Kurosawa has more masterpieces but Lee's contributions to cinema are incredible and incomporable. 

Did you watch The Bad Sleep Well and shout "WELL IT'S NO HAMLET!!!!"

The original is a stone cold masterpiece. Lee’s version is a damn mess. 

A friend recently saw it and said "You have to see it.  I feel like I'm going crazy.  This is one of the worst films I have ever seen and everyone is giving it raves."