Highest 2 Lowest (2025) .

"All Money Ain’t Good Money"   (David King)

Highest 2 Lowest is Spike Lee's reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 masterpiece High and Low, based on Ed McBain's book, The King's Ransom. It's about a kidnapping gone wrong and a moral decision and dillema of a rich man on the edge of losing all his money. The 1st act is slow as in Kurosawa'a original (the script for this is credited to the Japanese master and his collaborators, the film itself is dedicated to him).  Then the pace changes and it becomes energetic until the end. 

The film premiered in Cannes this year, out of competition (with Denzel Washington receiving an impromptu Palme d'Or for his 1st !!! visit to the Croisette) and it's an Apple+ film-for streaming with limited release in the US by A24. 

Denzel in his 5th collaboration with Spike plays a music mogul, "the best ears in the business" David King (the King from King's Ransom, in Kurosawa's film is Kingo Gondô as played by a magnificent Toshiro Mifune).  His second, friend and driver is Paul, a great restrained and dry humored performance by Jeffrey Wright.

Shot by Matthew Libatique, who went back to back in NY locations with Aronofsky's Caught Stealing (in cinemas now, go and see) in glorios widescreen. Libatique worked before with Lee on four films, including another NY flick, Inside Man .

H2L is a colorful love letter to Spike's beloved New York., Manhattan, Brookyln Bridge, Puerto Rican parade, Yankee stadium. 

Complete with 2 lengthy train /subway chases that quotes and hatsoff s Friedkin's legendary The French Connection. 

Also lots of art, from Basquiat to sports memorabilia and a lot of Muhhamed Ali stuff, to a painting entitled "Billie, Lester, Fats and Duke" by Frederick J. Brown. This painting was featured in "The Spike Lee 'Creative Sources' Exhibition" at the Brooklyn Museum. The title refers to prominent jazz musicians: Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington.

The soundtrack is a symphonic Howard Drossin score, then rap songs by A$AP Rocky (in the film Yung Felon) and some James Brown mean rhythms. 

The opening credits are shots of new NY buildings getting to King's skyscraper penthouse / terrace on classic musical Oklahoma's  Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', sung by Norm Lewis. A live performanced of Eddie Palmieri's Orchestra and Aiyana-Lee Anderson (as newcomer singer Sula) playing the title song (cos you goota too ;). Read comments and reviews about the worst score - I don't get if they meant the score or the songs, but personally I find the score excellent and a breakthrough-Drossin worked as an orchestrator for Spike's regular Terence Blanchard and with Lee since The 25th Hour, also with RZA and making videogames music. 

Might be Lee's most commercial film 'til Inside Man and the disastrous Oldboy and it's uneven but flavoury.

Revisited Kurosawa's film this spring and it's a timeless masterpiece! Lee's version plays more like a cover song, in color and with vivid wipes and tumult. 

6 out of 10 / 3 out of five !

Kurosawa's 1963 High and Low is a 9/10 for me ! Could've been a Ten tho ;)