Spike lee

Surely it is a sign of these hard cinematic times that an auteur-helmed remake of a midcentury international cinema classic is also the most exciting, engaging movie of the summer. Before Apple Original Films removes it from theaters for its future life on streaming, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest appears in US cinemas amid the usual summer commotion: comic-book movies and assorted remakes or sequels. As noted, Highest 2 Lowest is a remake too, but a remake of a work so remote from the cultural consciousness of most 21st-century moviegoers (Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece High and Low) that it feels fresh.

You’re the director of one of the biggest blockbusters in recent memory. Your latest project premiers Fourth of July weekend: an American Revolution epic, headlined by one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. What could go wrong? In 2000, Roland Emmerich did everything right with The Patriot. Robert Rodat, a veteran of Saving Private Ryan, wrote the script. The Smithsonian Institute consulted on historical accuracy. Mel Gibson, who had led the charge in Braveheart, was the star. He was also People’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’. ‘The problem I have is people love me so much, they never criticize me,’ Gibson lamented in a cameo on The Simpsons in 1999. ‘It’s hell being Mel.’ Cinematic hell is where The Patriot remains.

Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is about four African-American vets who return to Vietnam to locate the body of their fallen squadron leader, retrieve the gold they buried (hopefully), reflect on fighting for a country that didn’t care about them — ‘we fought an immoral war for rights we didn’t have’ — and avoid descending into madness and despair (also, hopefully). Lee and his co-writers have said they were inspired by the classic films The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Apocalypse Now and Bridge on the River Kwai and this does feel like several films in one. Oh, we’re in that film now, you may think to yourself. But even when Lee is all over the place he’s more interesting than many other filmmakers, and this is certainly of the moment.