Highest 2 Not quite Lowest
So just a few days ago I had the opportunity to watch Spike Lee's "Highest 2 Lowest". A friend invited me to catch a screening as we had talked about, and all weekend I was too busy to sit down and watch the original, so I looked at the clock and saw there was enough time to fit in a movie so I ended up watching the original "High and Low" from Kurosawa, for the first time ever, just before it. I felt it in my bones that I needed to see the original first before seeing a version inspired by it. Turns out that it was a good idea, and while I have criticisms of Lee's version, I never expected it to reach the highs of Kurosawa (that's just unfair), I think that overall it is an interesting experiment for such a high profile movie and it definitely does not end up being the lowest it could have been on paper. This isn't comprehensive but just some of my major thoughts after watching
What follows is not a direct comparison but just places where I feel there's a noticeable gap or difference in good ways and bad ways. Probably the biggest thing I noticed upon sitting down from the very opening was the level of artistry was not there. The masterful composition, blocking and attention to detail that makes me love Kurosawa movies was replaced with a more 'casual' filmmaking style. I feel like losing that depth of visual language requires picking up the slack in other places and unfortunately it never really happens although it does explore some interesting ideas that only exist in the material conditions of 2025 new york city.
An aspect of Kurosawa's version which is lost in the newer movie is the lack of focus on the rival business executives. In the original movie, they're inherently tied to suspicion of involvement with the kidnapping, but the fact that they don't end up having anything to do with it illustrates a key moral framing that Gondo deals with as well. They're willing to go behind his back as businessmen, Gondo is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure survival as well (also going behind their back and two-timing them), but his rivals are not willing to stoop that low as to do something like kidnapping. Even though they very likely have the means to do something of that nature, and get away with it (which is a key part here) just as they have gotten away with outing Gondo from the company. This also is reflected in Gondo's words to Jun as he sends him off to play as a thief (which is also reflected in the very act of him switching his role from that of a paragon of morality, a sheriff, to now being the thief). This is drilled home even further with Reiko's comments about how (paraphrasing) Jun seems to reflect his father more and more every day.
The dialectical nature of Gondo is such an interesting and well framed moral complex because we see that he's willing and ready to do "necessary evil" to combat evil, he has the resolve and a bandit within him that he's willing to become in order to get out ahead, but then just a little while later we see that the bandit within is no murderer, and now the quarrel is betwen whether that bandit would sacrifice another to save his own skin; robbing those who would see to your downfall is an entirely different act. It's a masterful conundrum that reflects a true analysis of morality and complexity of humans. I could go on and on about the rest of the scene but that's not really the focus here, and many other far more intelligent people have written about this movie saying things with far more focus and clarity than I can.
Lets get back to Spike Lee's movie
So in this movie, we don't get introduced to the executives off the bat, and much less are they played off as a pack of three cut throat businessmen like in the original movie. Instead we're later on introduced to one man who is shown to have a difference in vision of the company but a pragmatic one (there is another he's working with but he isn't shown until much later on in the movie). In the original, their business plan is presented as more scummy, we get an exact look at how they want to cut corners to squeeze out profit, and how that will lead to selling more shoes because of their flimsy nature. In Lee's version we just hear about AI music and licensing music out for commercial use. They have a small quarrel but the scene is much shorter, and composition isn't really used to create a visual sense of danger. Instead it seems like two guys in a high tech university study room having a Lebron vs Jordan debate on the more respectful end of the spectrum.
Because of that lack of danger built up and with how comparatively easily he puts together his plan to overcome his business adversaries, that build up to the big conundrum isn't there. David doesn't need to be a bandit, and though he's doing the same thing, taking control of a business that is more than just a business to him, it doesn't feel like as much of a massive undertaking. I think the technology difference plays into that, but I still feel like you can create higher stakes by insisting that this plan is kept offline (Which is where people store many important things such as recovery keys, etc.)
It's just one of those cases in the movie that had me scratching my head and wondering if we saw the same movie (Kurosawa's). Probably the next biggest case of this to me is where David and A$AP Young Felon are having the conversation in the studio which seems to parallel the final closing dialogue of Kurosawa's version. I thought it was an extremely clever take on the same thing, even the dialogue taking on a hip-hop flavor (Which David riffs on with his driver quite a lot throughout the movie), and it had me thinking that was Lee's transposing of that to a modern context. It's still fantastic, but.... then he ends up having that exact same prison visitation conversation again! And it's not even the end of the movie but instead a new scene which shows David and his family still in a fancy penthouse with expensive art everywhere evaluating a new artist. Oh yeah, let's talk about that
Kurosawa's film sees Gondo quite literally give up everything and return to just being a low shoeworker, even auctioning off all the items in his house by the time he gets the money back, while in Lee's version... he gets the money back but he also still lives in his fancy penthouse. The only difference is now he has a smaller more independent record label that he has started, but materially his life isn't much different (We don't see any difference as viewers either, maybe now he just works from home and doesn't have a driver I guess, what a downgrade). He chooses to give up the money to save his driver's son, but at the end of the day he doesn't really lose anything and even gets his money back. In that case, there's no real moral conundrum because if the choice is "Keep everything but the kid dies" or "keep everything but the kid (his god son at that) lives"... well I think aside from someone who is chaotic evil aligned they would pick the latter choice 100% of the time (And the chaotic evil splitting it 60/40).
I've been bouncing back and forth so one more thing I like is the fact that Lee's version does take into account general social conditions and changed the plot for that reason. In Kurosawa's version, Gondo takes a major backseat in the film for the last 2/3rds of the film (spitballing here) while the detective and the police force then take on the major action hunting down the true perpetrator.
Spike Lee is a 68 year old black man from new york. He had some... interesting takes on cops in his work Blackkklansmen but glorifying the NYPD was the very last thing on his mind. Instead they're shown as confrontational, dismissive to the driver (while very receptive to David, those class dynamics at work even if not fully explored with any real substance), and on a larger part incompetent. It's another translation of the movie that I think needed to happen given the difference in conditions and relations between the japanese police force and civilians of the 60s compared to NYPD's relation to modern new yorkers in 2025, especially to Black new yorkers (a world of "stop and frisk", etc etc.). It also makes sense that they didn't want to sideline Denzel Washington for a majority of the movie.
Now to bounce back... I think the score is pretty rough. The music picked for certain scenes seemed to not fit or outright defuse a lot of the drama. The scene that replaced Gondo meeting with the gang of 3, already much less antagonistic, also had a light hopeful piano piece playing underneath. The lighthearted hopeful piano music playing during the musings of the moral dilemma really lightened it too much to where I feel it sells the whole thing short and instead makes it almost comedic (His cold dismissal of his driver's kid so quickly and so assuredly can't be read any other way). The chase scene between David and Mr. Fenty also has a very misplaced wandering piano tune as if A$AP is taking David on a whimsical journey through new york.
The licensed music was good timeless music, and the Puerto Rican parade's diagetic music was also great (I was hittin the cumbia in my seat (in my head)). A$AP's song went hard too and it's the first song from him I've enjoyed in a while. These cues on motown and such made me really wonder why the hell they didn't have a better score otherwise? The very generic hopeful piano pieces carried the wrong mood and I'm wondering if they had went in a route of having that music be more motown inspired (some quick soul or funk hits as needed) as well as boom-bap hip hop inspired (It IS new york and the composer literally worked with RZA, he also worked on the Afro Samurai game!!), especially as the movie shifted to "on the streets" if that would have worked better: He hears great soulful music from that deluxe apartment in the sky (We finally got a piece of the pie) and as he goes onto the streets chasing down young felon he hears the gospel of the streets some Raekwon, Nas, mobb deep, Biggie, Ghostface, and too many more to name. Now I'm mad thinking about how that could've been utilized. Instead we get the same cheesy corny music during an armed subway chase scene as we do when he's sitting at home. hmph
Not bouncing back, another ding to me was the pacing to "the decision" and it highlights how masterful that entire sequence is in Kurosawa's film. In Kurosawa's film the kidnapping and the conundrum feel like they take place in real time because of the constant use of one scene and masterful blocking. The kidnapper chiming back in throughout the action keeps him in your mind and further puts more pressure on Gondo. In Lee's version though... It's almost shot like a sitcom. Instead of a constant shot, we get new shots of him appearing in bed with his wife discussing the issue, then we get a shot of him entering his son's room, then we get a shot of him back in his office. In general, between these shots we don't get a sense of how much time has passed but it feels like a lot of time has passed because we don't see this in real time. For all we know he could've been with his wife talking about their next vacation plans first before the camera drops in on them talking about what to do. It does a lot to cut down on the gravity of the dilemma which is the engine of the entire movie. The long time passing between calls (not even in a single shot), the lack of them being watched like in Kurosawa's, it does a lot to take the tension out of the scene. Overall I was probably the most disappointed by the lack of artful composition in general given Kurosawa is such a master at those things.
The only time we get any semblence of composition is when Lee wants to show off new york and "black excellence" in the form of expensive art and paintings around the house. It kind of rubs me the wrong way because it really feels like a celebration of Black Capitalism and the commodification of black art more than the black art itself. They love showing off references to Bird, Duke, Billie, etc. but it's just skin-deep aesthetic appreciation. We don't hear their music at all, don't see any records of theirs on the wall even; maybe if you look close in his office he does have quite a batch, but it's nowhere as prominent as the art. What about the black artists that even made those paintings? God damn now I'm thinking of the score again and how it could've started with the blues, went to big band, rock and roll, soul, all the way to hip-hop in the final scene (it would've fit with the final music video scene too!) god damn man so many missed opportunities on that. Fuck I should just score the movie myself.
It's one of those things that I don't look too deeply into because I'm not expecting Spike Lee to go Amiri Baraka on us but you look at something that Ryan Coogler made in Sinners and how it touches on all that and wonderfully, it just makes something like that a bit more glaring here. Ryan Coogler's scene in the juke joint drawing the direct lineage between African rhythmic foundations, the blues, bounce, snap music, rock, etc. means so much because of that celebration of black art. (And even then it's not just black art but Chinese, etc. as a function of the goings-on in the movie). Lee doesn't seem to take the opportunity to explore the celebration of music as much. Kurosawa's movie wasn't a celebration of shoes, but that's part of doing an adaptation (don't forget we got a masterful scene in the studio which was a result of the music exec route!)
Overall, I'm happy that Lee's version exists and it had interesting ideas although it also feels like it skipped over a lot of the artistry that makes Kurosawa's what it is with more focus on just the plot (which is from a book after all). It goes to show how movies end up being so much more than just their point-to-point plot by the masterful use of... well.. cinematics (composition, blocking, dialogue, score, etc.) that they use to convey their themes. If anything, (this will sound a wee bit pretentious) it feels like it was dumbed down to reach more of a casual audience who would probably be the types to never watch movies that are black and white, and/or have subtitles. If this is a way for them to get a (diluted) taste of Kurosawa, then so be it. If they go on to watch Kurosawa's films? Even better. I'd rather see a flawed take on a classic like this over ant-man 4 or Thor 6 or whatever (that said I did really enjoy fantastic four with some reservations). Going back to the previous point, I wonder if Apple executives had a hand in the theatrical cut? Is there a director's cut? who knows. Now I'm gonna go listen to Trunks again
back out the trunk from the front to the backand don't forget to file your tax retrn ;)