In the new Spike Lee film “Highest 2 Lowest,” Denzel Washington stars as music mogul David King. He lives at the top of the world — which, of course, is a New York City zip code — in a glittering penthouse with stunning views outside and a picture-perfect wife and teenage son safely inside. Until one’s not.
Then, King gets a call from a kidnapper who claims to have his son. In actuality, his son got away, but his son’s best friend — the son of King’s driver and longtime confidant — was mistakenly taken. How much is King willing to risk for that boy?
Sound familiar? It’s meant to. “Highest to Lowest” is director Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox’s take on the 1963 landmark film “High and Low” by legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. It opens in theaters this Friday and will be on Apple TV+ in early September.
Kurosawa was a giant. “Seven Samurai” is said to set the standard for the epic battle film, and “High and Low” for the crime film, loosely based on a book by Evan Hunter.
Lee first saw “High and Low” as a film student at New York University.
“[Kurosawa was] one of the greatest filmmakers ever,” Lee said. “This is a reinterpretation. There’s a tradition of jazz musicians doing their own reinterpretations of standing classic songs. So I took the approach. I’m a jazz musician. My father’s a great jazz musician, Billy Lee, so we were reinterpreting a great standard. That was the mindset.”
The great Eddie Palmieri performs in a terrific scene in this film — an outdoor concert that mimics the dance hall in the Kurosawa film. He died last week. Why did you select him?
“ It is a great, great loss. This scene takes place [at the] Puerto Rican Day Parade. He is one of the great Puerto Rican artists, so yeah. That was a no-brainer.”
Your character, David King, is in a financial bind when we meet him. He’s been leveraging his penthouse and other assets to try to buy out his company before it’s taken from him. He’s tense. Then he finds out it’s not his son that’s been kidnapped, but his son’s best friend has, the son of King’s driver and friend Paul Christopher, played by Jeffrey Wright. The kidnapper asks for a $17 million ransom.
You give Wright’s character dignity. He doesn’t grovel. In Kurosawa’s film, the chauffeur is a crying basket case, flinging himself at the feet of Gondo, the wealthy shoemaker. Was this a choice on your part, to give a man — a Black man — some dignity?
“ Well, that character that Jeffrey’s playing, he’s practically on his knees begging. And this is a key thing. This scene for me has everybody in the seats and they have to ask themselves the question, ‘If I’m in Denzel’s seat, how much would I be willing to pay my friend’s ransom for his son? Not my son, for his son.’ Everybody that sees that scene, whether in in a theater or home, is going to ask themselves that question and they’re going to remain different answers.
“ That particular scene, I think, deals more with the Japanese culture at that time. I don’t know if they do that today, but 1963, I don’t think that was something strange.”
King decides he has to try to find his friend’s son, and what has been a stage play becomes a chase movie. Palmieri’s music punctuates a scene where there’s an incredible chase aboard an above-ground New York subway train, then in cars through the city as young men on mopeds pass off the ransom money, and Palmieri and his salsa orchestra play at an exuberant Puerto Rican Day festival. Can you talk about how you used that juxtaposition?
“ Number one, I have to give my shout-out, my love to my great cinematographer Matthew Libatique.
“And this scene is one of the highlights and the original ‘High and Low.’ So we had to step it up. So this is a homage to Billy Friedan’s ‘French Connection.’ So the thinking was the kidnapper is very smart, thought of a way Denzel’s character, David King, to make the drop with the money and not get caught. So what he did was he looked at the schedule, the hated Boston Red Sox would be in the Yankee Stadium for an afternoon game on a Sunday. And that Sunday also happened to be Puerto Rican Day parade.”
It’s this incredible mashup of New York anti-Red Sox fans on the train, Puerto Ricans having the incredible time at this festival and your cameras.
“So this was in a skate park in the Bronx, one Subway stop away from Yankee Stadium. You know I says, Puerto Rican Day, so it has to be, we gotta get Eddie Palmieri, the late great Eddie Palmieri. And the song he’s playing is called ‘Puerto Rico.’”
The film is about the haves and have-nots, and the widening gap. In both your film and Kurosawa’s, the father meets with the kidnappers, and there’s a philosophical discussion about the kidnapper wanting what the rich man has. How did you consider that? There’s that thin line between acknowledging why someone might choose crime and asking an audience to feel sorry for a brutal kidnapper.
“ It’s the actors who you cast, and I had complete confidence that my brother A$AP Rocky could bring it. Because if the actor I chose and I step up to the plate and go toe-to-toe with Denzel, that would really hurt the film. So I knew A$AP Rocky was going to be right there, you know. Like, ‘I’m a man. I got testicles too, so come on with it.’”
It seems to be a story about young men who what they really want is a father figure. They want a mentor.
“Oh, you hit on that. That’s the first person who’s said this so far, and you get a clap.
“Yeah. In a critical scene like that, it’s like, you know, I’m a sports fan, but the best games are when they’re close. Now, when the games are slaughter, you’re not biting your fingernails. So that’s, that’s what A$AP Rocky brought to the scene with a final confrontation. That’s the highlight of the original film too.”
Denzel Washington — this is the fifth film you’ve worked on together, and he was the one who first sent Alan Fox’s script to you. What’s it like to work with one of the most beautiful faces in film, as it lets itself fall?
“ I’ve learned so much from Denzel’s acting, which has helped me as a director. The man has an aura, a presence, the intelligence, the heart to convey human traits before the camera. And I will tell you this, it raises everybody’s level, what they do behind the camera and in front of the camera. When you know you’re doing the scene with Denzel, you went to bed early the night before because you don’t wanna be embarrassed. And more than that, you wanna give him the respect that he deserves and that means given your best performance, but more than John Zel for the film. You got that?”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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