*A$AP Rocky will appear in Spike Lee’s upcoming movie “High and Low,” the filmmaker’s Americanized version of the 1963 Japanese crime thriller.
The rapper joins a cast that includes fellow artist Ice Spice, Denzel Washington, and Jeffrey Wright. The movie is “a reinterpretation, not a remake” of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low.” The film is loosely based on the 1959 novel “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain. The story follows an executive of a Yokohama shoe company who becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom, per IMDB.com.
“This is not a remake, this is a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s great film,” Lee told Deadline. “In Kurosawa’s film, Toshiro Mifune is a shoemaker. In our film Denzel Washington is a music mogul with his own label and his reputation as the best ear in the business. So, this is the fifth film with the dynamic duo.”
“High and Low” marks the fifth collaboration between the director and Washington, with their most recent partnership being the 2006 film “Inside Man.” Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Lee described their partnership as “the dynamic Duo of D and Lee.”
“We are brothers. … We just do our thing,” he added. “We are familiar with each other. Also, our families are very tight.”
Lee called Washington’s work in Malcolm X “one of the best performances in a biopic ever.”
He added, “Why would I work with Denzel only once? Or with John Turturro?” he said. “You want to surround yourself with great artists in front of and behind the camera.”
Lee approaches his documentary work the same he approaches feature films. “It’s still telling a story,” he explained, calling his acclaimed 1997 doc “4 Little Girls” “one of my most moving experiences filming.”
The documentary centers on the 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four African-American girls. While the FBI determined that four members of the Ku Klux Klan were responsible, no prosecutions were initiated at the time.
“Many years later, a week before the film was supposed to open at the Film Forum, I get a call from the FBI, saying they want a print of the film. I gave it to them,” Lee explained to THR. “The FBI reopened the case and charged those criminals with murder. That’s the best work I have ever done, and it was hard.”
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Ice Spice on Board for Acting Debut with Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s ‘High And Low’
