HIGHEST 2 LOWEST | Summit meeting






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In Highest 2 LowestAccording to a novel by Ed McBain brilliantly brought to the screen by Akira Kurosawa, Spike Lee finds Denzel Washington, his favorite actor, almost 20 years after Inside Man.


Released in 1963, Between heaven and hell (High and Low in English version), free adaptation of Ransom on a minor theme (The King’s Ransom), Ed McBain’s novel released in 1959, is one of the most important and popular films of Akira Kurosawa (Rashōmon, The seven samurai, Ran). More than sixty years later, with the collaboration of the scriptwriter Alan Fox, Spike Lee revisits this monument of Japanese cinema with Highest 2 Lowestprojected out of competition in Cannes last May.

Having influenced a good number of filmmakers by its meticulous staging, its powerful social commentary and its heartbreaking moral dilemma, this thriller features the great Toshirō Mifune, a favorite actor of the brilliant Japanese filmmaker, in the role of Kingo Gondo, rich industrial shoe rich, forced to pay a ransom when his son is kidnapped.

However, there was a mistake on the person. It was the driver’s son and not that of Gondo who was removed. The kidnapper still requires money. From the sumptuous home of Gondo dominating Yokohama, the action is then transported in the city’s shallows, the kingdom of the criminal.

Marking the fifth collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington (Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game et Inside Man), Highest 2 Lowest Takes his part in Brooklyn and the story has been transposed in the music industry.

With the grace of a tightrope walker, Denzel Washington carefully avoids falling into the caricature trap by composing a flamboyant character, David King, who, from the top of his luxurious Penthouse of Olympia Dumbo Building, in Brooklyn, has the power to give birth or kill careers.

Like Kingo Gondo, the man will not only face a family drama, but he will also have to think about his professional future, review his personal priorities and remember his fundamental values.

Faced with Washington, Jeffrey Wright, still excellent, does not allow himself to be imposed in the role of Paul Christopher, a driver with a heavy past finding comfort in Islam – his prayers in Allah evoke the driver’s supplications in the 1963 film. In addition to signing two songs from the soundtrack, A $ ap Rocky embodies with ease and unscrupulous rapper Yung Felon. It is a shame that the characters of the son and King’s wife were not more extensive, Ilfenesh Hadera and Aubrey Joseph appearing in this universe where the sober elegance and the bling-bling rub shoulders.

Taking greatly profit from the interior sets, playing brilliantly with transparency and mirror effects, both in the powerful and the left-handed and the marginalized, Spike Lee orchestra a remarkable pursuit in the metro, where David King must put the ransom. The sequence, more than breathless, is transported to the outside, where a Puerto Rican music festival is in full swing. The late Eddie Palmieri and his orchestra are also a place of choice in this moment of anthology, when the director of Do the Right Thing pay a vibrant tribute to New York and its culture, as well as to the genius of Kurosawa.

While the Japanese filmmaker abandoned the spectator on a striking plan, Spike Lee rather chose to finish this thriller, often talkative, by a long epilogue, highlighting the morals of this story of class struggle. Despite his prodigious talent, which he sometimes spreads ostentatiously, the pupil did not exceed the master.

At the museum cinema in original version with French subtitles

Retrospective Spike Lee + Denzel Washington on August 16 and 17 at the museum cinema

Consult the event page

From September 5 on Apple TV

Thriller

Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee

Avec Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, A$AP Rocky

2 h 13

8/10

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