It’s nice to know that a Spike Lee Joint still means something in today’s age of straight-to-streaming phenoms and blockbuster franchises. The Brooklyn-raised filmmaker can still grab audiences with anything bearing his name, even when he’s reimagining works beyond his typically original filmography.
For more than three decades, Lee has dazzled and revolutionized the movie world with his iconic, out-of-the-box ideas rooted in the complexities of race, class, identity, politics, and, most of all, personal reckonings. The latter is especially true of his latest feature, “Highest 2 Lowest,” a contemporary reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 kidnapping thriller “High and Low,” now set against the backdrop of the music industry and its inherent perils.
It’s not often that we see Lee dip into remake territory. However, his longtime love for Kurosawa’s work and a chance to reunite with Denzel Washington — whom he’s collaborated with five times on 1990’s “Mo’ Better Blues,” 1992’s “Malcolm X,” 1998’s “He Got Game,” and 2006’s “Inside Man”— presented a challenge he seemingly couldn’t refuse. Let’s put an emphasis on challenge.
With a screenplay helmed by Alan Fox, Lee had his work cut out for him, updating a black-and-white noir classic to a present-day, New York City-centric thrill ride, although the thrills don’t quite arrive until the film’s riveting final act. Before that, though, Lee takes some creative detours that immediately give his reinterpretation an identity of its own, or rather, his identity.
