Spike Lee knows a thing or two about the pressures of trying to remake a masterpiece. After his ill-advised remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, it was a surprise that Lee would aim even higher to remake High and Low, the exquisite 1963 Akira Kurosawa crime thriller that has left a mark on acclaimed films like Parasite, as well as the police procedural genre at large. But this time, Lee avoids remaking High and Low beat-for-beat, as he did with his Oldboy; instead, his supercharged thriller film Highest 2 Lowest only takes the basic premise of the story and turns it into a frequently bombastic and occasionally baffling, but undeniably Spike Lee movie.
