Spike Lee Reinterprets Kurosawa Classic in Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest reinterprets Kurosawa’s High and Low with a New York twist and a high-stakes ransom plot.

Spike Lee Reimagines Kurosawa Classic in Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest reimagines Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low. Denzel Washington plays David King, a New York City penthouse boss whose life is upended when a kidnapping targets a friend’s child, the son of his driver. The twist is that the kidnapped is not King's own son but his driver’s child, and the ransom runs to 17 million dollars. The film opens in theaters this Friday and will stream on Apple TV+ in September. Lee frames the story as a modern chase that blends a crime thriller with social drama, set against an urban soundscape that blends Eddie Palmieri's music with action sequences on a subway and city streets. The project positions itself as a dialogue between Kurosawa's original and a contemporary metropolis while paying homage to classic crime cinema.

Lee casts A$AP Rocky opposite Washington and uses Eddie Palmieri's score to fuse cultural textures with the suspense. The interview embedded in the piece shows Lee describing his approach as a jazz musician reinterpreting a standard, aiming to provoke the audience to confront wealth and responsibility. The film foregrounds class and race without losing the thriller pulse, and it nods to The French Connection as a source of kinetic energy in its subway chase.

Lee’s remake is not a simple retelling; it is a cultural conversation about who gets to tell a Kurosawa story today. By making the chauffeur a dignified Black man in a tight moral bind, he invites viewers to weigh empathy against power. The inclusion of Eddie Palmieri's live score and a Puerto Rican Day Parade sequence places the film in a New York we rarely see in Kurosawa’s shadow. The clash between a high-society crisis and urban life creates a rhythm that updates the original’s social critique for modern concerns about wealth gaps and representation. Casting A$AP Rocky injects generational tension that keeps the protagonist on edge and raises questions about mentorship and fatherhood. The risk is clear: audiences may compare this directly with Kurosawa’s gold standard, yet Lee’s jazz-inspired approach signals confidence that a classic can live in a new key and still spark debate.

Highlights

A modern remix of a classic leaves a lasting question for audiences about who owns a screenplay’s legacy