Spike Lee serves another great New York film

NO OTHER FILMMAKER LOVES THE DIRTY OLD town that is New York more than Spike Lee.

- BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

Some of us who live there will return from a day out and about—traversing streets strewn with trash or riding in subway cars that smell like an animal stall—and still think, This, and nowhere else, is home. Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (in theaters Aug. 22 and on Apple TV+ Sept. 5) is a new entry on the scroll of great New York films. It’s smart, hugely entertaining, and profound in a way that’s anything but sentimental. With Akira Kurosawa as his guiding star—the film is a reimagining of the Japanese master’s 1963 High and Low, a police procedural with a deep moral underpinning—Lee’s film feels modest and grand at once, a movie you can see on a Saturday night and still be thinking about the next day.