Highest 2 Lowest

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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In Connecticut, I used to live up the hill from writer Evan Hunter. You may be more familiar with his “87th Precinct” police procedural novels under the pen name of Ed McBain. One of his books (“King’s Ransom”) was made into a movie by Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa.

Now, Kurosawa’s 1963 classic (called “High and Low”) has been remade by my old buddy (well, I knew his wife), Spike Lee.

For this new version, Spike Lee teamed up with Denzel Washington, their first reunion since 2006’s “Inside Man.” This is, in fact, their fifth collaboration.

Ed McBain’s crime thriller focused on the moral dilemma of a wealthy man forced to choose between using his wealth to fulfill a personal ambition or saving the life of a kidnapped child.

Loosely based on McBain’s storyline, Kurosawa’s film starred Toshiro Mifune as a shoe manufacturer plotting a corporate takeover when he receives a phone call claiming his son has been kidnapped. The twist is that the bad guys have snatched his chauffeur’s son by mistake.

Toho Studios purchased the book rights from McBain for a paltry $5,000. The actual Japanese title was “Tengoku to Jigoku” – which translates as “Heaven and Hell,” a thematic reference to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

When asked whether it was correct to view the film as being anti-capitalist, Kurosawa responded:

“Well, I did not want to say so formally. I always have many issues about which I am angry, including capitalism. Although I don’t intend explicitly to put my feelings and principles into films, these angers slowly seep through. They naturally penetrate my filmmaking.”

Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” has been called a “reinterpretation” of Kurosawa’s film.

Instead of a shoe manufacturer, we have Denzel Washington as David King, a music mogul with Stackin’ Hot Records. Putting up all his assets (money, penthouse, art collection) to buy out one of his partners, he gets a call – you guessed it – from a kidnapper. And just like in the previous tellings, it mistakenly turns out to be his driver’s son.

Will he risk everything for someone else’s child?

The cast includes Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, and Ice Spice (making her film debut).

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 90% rating, calling it a “swaggering thriller.”

College Movie Review describes it as “a great summer movie, a great New York movie, and a great showcase for two legends.”

KCCI (Des Moines) observes, “The director knows his place, knows he can’t outdo Kurosawa … so he’s created a vision of the story that’s all his own.”

As Washington City Paper says, “Lee’s filmmaking has always been closer to movie-verse than to movie-prose, and he’s freestyling here, letting scenes play longer and end more ambiguously than a filmmaker beholden to studio notes ever could.”

On the other hand, #Content Report shrugs it off as “an above-average ‘Law & Order’ episode trapped inside the world’s corniest hype reel for New York City.”

Kurosawa’s “Tengoku to Jigoku” is perhaps a better movie, but Spike Lee captures Ed McBain’s noirish New York City to greater effect than the city of Yokohama ever did.

You can still catch “Highest 2 Lowest” at Tropic Cinema, if you hurry. But if you miss it, Spike Lee’s film is also showing on Apple TV.

As for the original writer of the story, blogger James Scott Bell summed him up nicely:

“Evan Hunter (whose real name was Salvatore Albert Lombino!) always considered himself a ‘literary writer.’ To earn extra dough, he wrote police procedurals under an alias so the critics would not look at his ‘serious’ work with a jaundiced eye. But as Ed McBain, he produced a remarkable run of noir that made him a multi-millionaire. The truth came out eventually, though Evan was probably always a little jealous of Ed.”

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com