High and Low

Highest 2 Lowest

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David stares directly ahead

The least satisfying Spike Lee film I’ve ever seen, Highest 2 Lowest at least has the excuse that it’s Spike Lee in gun for hire mode. Walter Salles, Mike Nicholls and Martin Scorsese were all lined up to direct at various points. It’s mystifying, though, because Lee’s journeyman work is usually better than this. It’s a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, or so the blurbs say. In fact Lee and adapter Alan Fox seem in a hurry to work through Kurosawa’s scenarios, as if they had a more urgent appointment elsewhere. If they did, they’re not telling us what it is. In other words, if you want to see a really … Read more

High and Low

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Mr Gondo with the ransom money, a cop looks on in the background

Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low – one of a run of successful movies from him in the late 1950s and early 1960s – is something of a surprise. It sets off in one direction, with a moral dilemma, only to wind up in a different place entirely, as a police procedural the likes of which you can catch on TV any night of the week. This comes as a bit of a relief, because for its first third the tension is so exquisitely pitched it’s hard to look at the screen. It’s based on an Ed McBain thriller and tells the story of a businessman locked in the middle of a struggle for control … Read more