Spike Lee relocates an Akira Kurosawa classic

'Highest 2 Lowest' is a hit-and-miss remix of a crime thriller about a moral dilemma.

- KATIE WALSH

DAVID LEE A24 DENZEL Washington stars as a music mogul in his fifth Spike Lee film.

From the opening moments of “Highest 2 Lowest,” Spike Lee’s remix-as-remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller, “High and Low,” you should know that the filmmaker is here primarily for a good time and he’s asking us to play along.

Over aerial shots of the sun hitting the New York City skyline, including the stunning Olympia building looming over Brooklyn, Lee layers “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” the opening song from the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!,” a jarring, cheeky choice that jolts us out of what we might think a Spike Lee Kurosawa remake is supposed to be.

The Japanese auteur has long been a major influence on Lee, and when the script for "Highest 2 Lowest" (by Alan Fox), which had been in development with other filmmakers, came his way, Lee made it his own.

He also cast longtime collaborator Denzel Washington, an apt pairing. Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune; Lee has Washington. (It’s their fifth film together.)

This all sounds great on paper, but what ends up on screen is a confusingly mixed bag. Kurosawa’s “High and Low” was based on the 1959 Ed McBain cop novel, “King’s Ransom,” about a moral dilemma that becomes an identity crisis for a wealthy man. Transporting the action to Japan's post-World War II economic boom, Kurosawa examined class differences in the country. Though Lee uses the text to comment on the haves and have-nots, too, his focus is trained on the 21st century attention economy dictated by the social media hordes.