How Spike Lee put his own spin on an Akira Kurosawa classic: “The extremes come naturally”
If you haven’t ever seen the 1954 Japanese film The Seven Samurai then the best thing you can possibly do right now is to stop reading this, put down your phone, or step away from your computer, find some way of watching it (probably with a snack for stamina), then come back in just under four hours time and we’ll pick things up again.
Done it? Excellent. Wasn’t it absolutely amazing? Did you spot what an influence the movie has been on countless big-name directors over the last 70 years? Are you annoyed you hadn’t ever watched it before? Do you now want to join a band of armed Japanese mercenaries on an epic adventure? Alright, possibly not the last one.
But it’s fair to say that the film’s director, Akira Kurosawa, left his mark on movie-making and then some. Quentin Tarantino, for example, openly states that Kurosawa had a huge influence on his creative work, calling him a “Master” and describing his films as having “Awe-inspiring power”. He even references Kurosawa’s film directly in the likes of Kill Bill and Django Unchained.
One of Tarantino’s contemporaries, Spike Lee, is another director on whom Kurosawa has had an impact, so much so that Lee’s latest project is a reimagining of the Japanese auteur’s 1963 police procedural High and Low – only this time titled Highest 2 Lowest. Lee’s film stars A$AP Rocky and Denzel Washington as a legendary music producer struggling to find his way in the new order of things, with a gritty New York City as the backdrop.
Kurosawa’s original story is set in Japan and features a businessman whose son is kidnapped for ransom just as he plans to buy out his company, whereas Washington faces trying to get back the son of his chauffeur. Both stories, however, pit the old guard against the new; men who don’t understand the modern ways of doing things but are plunged into them in order to seek justice.
Spike Lee, though, believes the two films stand independently and doesn’t view his movie as simply a rehash. He told The Film Comment Letter: “Yeah [Laughs]. It’s not High and Low. It’s Highest 2 Lowest. It’s not a remake, it’s a reinterpretation. The Kurosawa film is set in Tokyo, and the protagonist is a shoe-company executive.
“Here, we’re dealing with the music industry, but the big difference is that we’re in New York City, which is not really part of the United States. We do our own thing. Not “thing”—T-H-A-N-G. And that’s why people love and hate New York. But we don’t care. The extremes come naturally because that’s New York today, which is why we had to shoot there.”
It has been some 18 years since Lee and Washington last worked together on the well-regarded thriller Inside Man, and before that, the pair had combined on a number of movies, including Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X, and He Got Game. Lee says that the duo will get together occasionally, usually around a shared love of basketball.
“… if the Knicks or the Lakers go, like, five games, then we’ll be out there,” he says. “He has a place near me, but we don’t see each other every day. We’re cool. But it’s not like we’re calling each other up all the time. It’s not that type of relationship. I always want to work with him. But that’s life. We’ve got different projects. He was doing Equalizer stuff. I’m doing my thing. But the intent—that we were gonna work together again—was always there.”
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