Among the weirdest films to premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is Spike Lee ’s out-of-competition drama-thriller Highest 2 Lowest, the kind of idiosyncratic indulgence only a filmmaker of Lee’s stature is allowed.

Highest 2 Lowest is an old man’s movie, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. Spike Lee is 68 years old, and Denzel Washington is 70, and it’s fitting for them to ruminate on what they’ve accomplished and how they fit into a world that continues to change around them.

A new Spike Lee movie is still a calendar-clearing event; in the near 30 years since She’s Gotta Have It helped kickstart the Amerindie boom and introduced the world to a brash, trash-talking auteur from Brooklyn,

The reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s masterful 1963 police procedural about an abduction and ransom plot also stars Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky.

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington have walked a long road together. The director and actor’s collaboration has run for 35 years, starting with “Mo’Better Blues” and including the seminal “Malcolm X.” But one thing they’ve never done is ascend the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival as comrades in arms.

Highest 2 Lowest was shot across New York with elaborate action scenes in the Bronx, set against the backdrop of Yankee Stadium. During the presser, Lee was asked about shooting in New York and how he thinks the recent drop in production in the city could be resolved.

Lee's "re-imagining" of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller 'High and Low' also stars Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Wendell Pierce and rappers ASAP Rocky and Ice Spice.

Denzel Washington gives his most commanding screen performance in ages as a music tycoon who thinks his son has been kidnapped.

Spike Lee returned to the Cannes Film Festival Official Selection tonight with his latest feature, Highest 2 Lowest, which is running in the Out of Competition strand. Starring Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright,

Denzel Washington plays a music mogul who faces a series of big moral choices in a film whose sensational third act justifies remaking Akira Kurosawa.