See Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low before we open Spike Lee’s reimagining of the film, Highest 2 Lowest, on August 15.

Legendary actor Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo) is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.