Can you handle Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest teaser?
“Can you handle the mayhem? Can you handle the money? Can you handle the success? Can you handle the failure?” These are just a few of the questions Denzel Washington asks in the teaser for Highest 2 Lowest, the latest Spike Lee joint. The real question is: can he?
While Washington’s character is clearly used to high-stakes dealings, the circumstances of Highest 2 Lowest promise to put all that big talk to the test. “When a titan music mogul (Washington), widely known as having the ‘best ears in the business,’ is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma,” the film’s logline reads.
If all of that sounds a bit familiar, that’s not an accident. Highest 2 Lowest is loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low (1963)—itself an adaptation of the 1959 novel King’s Ransom—which follows the story of a businessman struggling for control of a major shoe company, who faces a similar moral dilemma when his chauffeur’s son is accidentally kidnapped for ransom. “One of the best things about film school is that you get introduced to world cinema, not just Hollywood,” Lee said of this inspiration at the Red Sea Film Festival last year (per Variety), where he explained that Kurosawa’s Rashomon also influenced the structure of She’s Gotta Have It. “From the very beginning of my career, I was influenced by Kurosawa.”
Lee has also been inspired by Washington, who has become a muse for him over the years. Highest 2 Lowest marks their fifth collaboration. This time around, Washington will be joined by Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, and A$AP Rocky, whom Lee lauded in a recent interview: “I mean, there’s some scenes where him and D [Washington] head to head—he ain’t backing up. Like, ‘I’m here too.'”
Highest 2 Lowest will premiere at Cannes later this month. It’s currently set for a theatrical run from A24 starting August 22, before it streams on Apple TV+ September 5.