PLOT: Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) return to their Jim Crow-era southern home to open a juke joint. While anticipating trouble from the Klan, it turns out they have another enemy they could have never anticipated.
REVIEW: It’s hard to make a vampire movie feel fresh, but that’s what director Ryan Coogler has done with Sinners, perhaps his best film to date. Expertly marrying the classic “survive the night” premise, which has paid such hefty dividends for everything from Assault on Precinct 13 to From Dusk Till Dawn, Coogler’s made an emotional, blood-soaked epic that may well go down as a classic of its kind.
Running 137 minutes, the movie takes its time building up the atmosphere of Smoke and Stack’s southern home, with us getting to know a disparate cast of characters. This makes the horror aspect all the more potent when it kicks in, as you’ve become emotionally invested with everyone by the time they start getting picked off. Chief among them are Smoke and Stack themselves, WWI veterans who’ve made a chunk of cash they plan on using to open a roadhouse that can serve their community – and hopefully, make them rich. Of the two, Smoke is the more thoughtful and eager to pick up with his one-time lover, a medicinal healer who serves the community named Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). On the other hand, Stack is more of a hustler, but he’s also emotionally involved with the white woman, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) the twins grew up with, and who still loves him.
Meanwhile, there’s their blues-playing cousin, Miles Caton’s Sammie, whose talent is so fierce it can’t help but wake up a demonic force they’ll all have to contend with. This comes in the form of Jack O’Connell’s Irish vampire, Remmick, who tries to lure them in with a promise of eternal life but also, finally, some sense of equality. Coogler does an excellent job evoking the time and the place with gorgeous 2:76:1 Ultra Panavision lensing by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, which opens up to full 1:44:1 IMAX during many key sequences in a superb use of the format.
While the horror and action elements are plentiful and will no doubt be what really draws in an audience, there’s more to Sinners. In fact, it’s almost a quasi-musical, with the blues-driven score, which contains several songs produced by composer Ludwig Göransson and sung by Caton and O’Connell, with his musical appreciation part of Remmick’s silver-tongued appeal.
Coogler does a masterful job mounting the film, so much so that even the first half, which plays more like a blues-infused historical drama, plays exceptionally well. Some jaw-dropping moments could have fallen apart in another director’s hands because of how wildly ambitious they are. Yet, even a moment where Caton’s playing conjures up musicians from the past, present and future, which sounds absurd, works brilliantly and is one of the movie’s finest scenes.
At the same time, horror and action fans will be well-served, with loads of carnage and action. Jordan, as always, is a more than capable action hero – one of the best to emerge in the last few years. Yet, it’s the emotional aspect of the film that gives it some real staying power, with Jordan’s doomed romance with Steinfeld given heft, with her a plain-spoken, headstrong, but kind woman who, more than anyone, knows how dangerous her love can be in the Jim Crow south. Plus, there’s Delroy Lindo as a worn-out old bluesman who finds himself reinvigorated by Caton’s talent, and as Mosaku’s Annie, whose fierce love protects our heroes when things get crazy. Sinners will also put Miles Canton on the map, with his character, Sammie, in many ways the true lead, being a preacher’s son torn between his cousins, who encourage his talent but operate on the margins with their shady pasts, and his devout father. Sammie seems somewhat inspired by the myths around bluesman Robert Johnson who, as legend says, sold his soul to the devil in a Faustian pact.
Hopefully, audiences will turn out to see Sinners in droves. It’s the kind of elevated blockbuster a guy like Christopher Nolan churns out (he earns a thank you in the credits), with Coogler really working at that level here. It’s an invigorating piece of work that I can’t wait to see again. It’s good enough that I can’t help but hope Coogler eventually parts ways with the MCU (after his next Black Panther flick), as he seems better off playing in his own sandbox. Given the right resources and support, Sinners might be the beginning of a whole new chapter for one of our most exciting, emerging filmmakers.
