“Highest 2 Lowest” Trailer Reveals Spike Lee’s New Joint With Denzel Washington
You want to get film nerds salivating? Drop a new trailer for a Spike Lee joint starring Denzel Washington that reveals Lee’s latest, which is a riff on the work of another film legend, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Lee’s film, produced by A24 and set to hit theaters on August 22 before streaming on Apple TV+ (with a world premiere set for Cannes), stars Washington as a music industry titan who is targeted in a ransom plot, moving Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller from Yokohama, Japan to New York City. Lee’s film was adapted by Alan Fox, with Washington’s music mogul having to face what should be a fairly easy decision—whether to further his own career or save his kid’s life. Kurosawa and Lee’s films are both based on Ed McBain’s novel “The King’s Ransom.”
The 51-second teaser trailer centers on one of the film’s purest pleasures: hearing Washington rip into his dialogue as he explains what it takes to succeed in his business. This is Lee and Washington’s fifth collaboration. The cast includes Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Dean Winters, John Douglas Thompson, and two music superstars—A$AP Rocky and Ice Spice.
Lee has been a longtime admirer of Kurosawa’s work. He brought up the legendary director at the Red Sea Film Festival, where he told the audience that seeing Kurosawa’s iconic Rashomon inspired Lee to make She’s Gotta Have It. “In Rashomon, you have three people who witness a rape, and each gives their own opinion of what happened. In She’s Gotta Have It, Nola Darling has three boyfriends who each see her in a different way,” Lee said at the fest. From the very beginning of my career, I was influenced by Kurosawa.'”
Check out the trailer below.
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