“He’s like a jazz musician,” Matthew Libatique explains when quizzed on his longtime collaborator Spike Lee .

The two filmmakers, both native New Yorkers, have worked together on five features: Inside Man, She Hate Me, Miracle at St. Anna, Chi-Raq , and, most recently, Highest 2 Lowest , which opens today in U.S. theatres. Only Ernest Dickerson, the great cinematographer behind Lee’s most famous works, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, and Jungle Fever , has worked with the filmmaker more.

Highest 2 Lowest is Lee’s first New York-shot and set film since 2014’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus . A remake, or, as Lee has described, a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low , it’s an ambitious film set across Manhattan and Brooklyn, with some of the most impressive action s

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