There’s enormous risk in remaking a movie like “High and Low.” Japanese master Akira Kurosawa set the bar high with his 1963 take on a kidnapping that brings an ambitious businessman to his knees — which means, even in the hands of such a visionary director as Spike Lee, you can’t help worrying how low a modern, New York-set update might go.
For three-quarters of its running time, Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” glides along far better than skeptics might have expected (it’s night and day with his sordid U.S. adaptation of “Old Boy”). And then comes a scene for which there is no equivalent in Kurosawa’s version — a
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