It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Spike Lee and Denzel Washington get together and make a film, that movie is not to be missed. From
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Spike Lee and Denzel Washington get together and make a film, that movie is not to be missed. From Mo’ Better Blues to Malcolm X, He Got Game to Inside Man, the director-actor duo simply do not miss. And if the first teaser for Lee and Washington’s recent joint, Highest 2 Lowest, is anything to go by then that sizzling streak is about to continue in style. A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Toshirô Mifune starrer High And Low, Lee’s latest — which also boasts A$AP Rocky, Ice Spice, Jeffrey Wright, and Ilfenesh Hadera among its cast — sees Denzel star as a high-powered music mogul with “the best ears in the business” targeted by a tumultuous ransom plot. Check out the buzzy recent trailer below;
“There’s more to life than just making money,” the unmistakable voice of Denzel Washington intones over animated shots of the Brooklyn Bridge here, taking Kurosawa’s early 60s Japanese extorted cobbler plot and bringing it to present-day NYC, “there’s integrity, there’s what you stand for, there’s what you actually believe in.” Then BAM! James Brown’s ‘The Payback’ kicks in and we see Washington rocking solid gold Beats, A$AP Rocky in the booth and in court, Jeffrey Wright wielding a shooter, police sirens whirring, and… well… shit generally seeming to hit the fan left, right, and centre as a kidnapping plot materialises and Denzel’s monologue gets into its flow. “Can you handle the mayhem? Can you handle the money? Can you handle the success? Can you handle the failure? Can you handle the lovers? Can you handle the memes? Can you handle everything that there is in between?” spits Washington, barring with that classic Lee verve. “That is the question I have for you. Can you handle it?”
Well, Denzel Washington, we’ve only seen 50 seconds of the mayhem, money, success, failure, lovers, memes, and everything in between so far, but the only thing we reckon we’re struggling to handle right now is our excitement to see two legends of the game teaming up once again. Still, we don’t have too, too long to wait, folks. Highest 2 Lowest hits cinemas on 22 August ahead of the movie’s planned 5 September drop on Apple TV+. In the meantime, we’re gonna roll that trailer back one, or two, or thirty more times just for Denzel’s hypnotic line delivery.
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