Sinners review – Absolute sin-ema!

Sinners, writer/director Ryan’s Coogler’s gonzo vampire spiritual opens with a voiceover explaining that there are people “with a gift of making music so true, they can conjure spirits from the past and future, but it also can pierce the veil between life and death”. And then Coogler and his incredible collaborators spend the next 130-ish minutes demonstrating with rip-roaring gusto that this statement holds true for all artists, especially filmmakers, with this toothy gothic parable about ambition, lust, and, most importantly, freedom. 

His first original blockbuster following his franchise work on Creed and the Black Panther films, Sinners sees Coogler bringing to bear all the many skills he’s honed in these previous efforts as well as his indie breakout Fruitvale Station. The acclaimed filmmaker combines poignant social commentary about the blood-soaked history of African Americans with wide-eyed, big budget spectacle. Hell, the film even boasts an “assembling the team” plot and end-credits stinger that wouldn’t be out of place in a Marvel superhero team-up movie, right alongside the racial evils of the Ku Klux Klan.

For all that overarching narrative complexity, the setup is a relatively simple one. Set in 1932, in the Jim Crow-era American South, Sinners follows twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore (both roles played by Michael B. Jordan) as they return home to the Mississippi Delta with a bag of money, a truck full of booze, and a dream. Seven years before, using the martial skills they had learned as WWI veterans, the infamous “Smokestack Twins” had left the cotton-picking quotas and local mysticisms of their small hometown to build their collective name in the criminal underground of Chicago, working under the likes of Al Capone. Now, they want to pay back their community – and make enough quick cash to shake off the creditors on their tails – by building a juke joint “by the people, for the people”.

To make the grand opening night of the newly minted Club Juke a smashing success, Smoke and Stack need the right people around them. This starts with their young cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), an exceptionally talented young musician who dreams of playing the blues in defiance of his pastor father’s claims that his music will attract the devil. Also on musical duty is liquor-swilling pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), with some vocals from Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a local singer who immediately catches Sammie’s eye. Smoke and Stack’s lumbering old friend Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) plays doorman, while the husband-and-wife team of Bo and Grace Chow (Yao, Li Jun Li) tackle provisions. 

Also in the picture are a pair of love interests that the twins left behind years before, much to their ire. For Smoke, it’s his estranged wife and resident occultist Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), with whom he shares a tragic past. For Stack, it’s Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the white-passing young woman he abandoned for Chicago despite their fiery relationship. And with these two additions at Club Juke, the team is complete, and the stage set for a night of musical revelry and debauchery jubilant enough to make the downtrodden people of this community forget their daily grind of backbreaking labour and debasing inequality.

That is until Sammie’s incredible music attracts the attention of Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish immigrant with his own ideas about freedom, kinship, and equality. And who just so happens to be a bloodthirsty vampire looking to violently spread his message before the night is done.

Turning to frequent collaborator Ludwig Göransson, Coogler ensures that a film about the transcendental power of music boasts a score that lives up to that motif in every way. The award-winning composer gives us a soundscape rooted in blues but stuffed full of eclectic genre switches that is every bit as much a performer as any actor in front of the camera. Combined with some genius sound design, the nigh-always present auditory components of Sinners contextualizes, elevates, and ties together on-screen events better than any production in recent memory. 

A mid-film highlight sees 20-year-old feature film debutant Caton not only flexing all his star-making talent as Sammie bares his soul musically in a packed Club Juke, but Coogler, Göransson, and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw also give us a sweeping single-take anachronistic mash-up of dance and music which has to be seen and heard to be believed. Stretching from contemporary modern offerings to the tribal ceremonies of the pasts, it’s surreal, awe-inducing stuff and somebody should just give them all the Oscars now. No need to make us wait for the inevitable.

Besides for the breakout of Caton, the rest of the cast also delivers in spades with not a weak link to be found. However, special mention has to be made of Jordan with his dual roles of Smoke and Stack. Coogler employs some seriously potent movie magic hoodoo to have Jordan convincingly interacting with himself on-screen (I’m going to need some behind-the-scenes footage to see how some of it was actually pulled off), but it would have all fallen apart if the actor didn’t bring his contribution. And Jordan definitely does, managing to make Smoke and Stack clearly feel like two different people with their own respective personalities and mannerisms, without relying on clumsy visual cues. Jordan has appeared in every single one of Coogler’s films, and he keeps his streak of incredible performances alive here.

If there’s any criticism to be levelled at Sinners though, it’s that it’s a film of two definitive halves. I would have preferred if the story bared its supernatural fangs much sooner, so to speak, giving us more of the horrific touches that Coogler excels at later on. This would also have allowed for certain aspects of the characters, particularly that of Remmick, to be dug into more.

As it stands, you will probably also see a number of comparisons made between Sinners and From Dusk till Dawn, as the latter boasted almost the exact same dramatic grounded-to-gory switcheroo structure back in 1996. The very notable difference here, though, is that that the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez offering was nothing more than a fun jaunt, with its most impactful contribution to the cultural zeitgeist being the image of Salma Hayek draped in a big snake and very little else. 

Coogler, on the other hand, seems physically incapable of making a movie where every frame doesn’t have something to say. In the case of Sinners, said frames feature the bloody dispatching of monsters, either by wooden stake or tommy gun, as he juxtaposes mythical and historical evil. And he does all this while consistently keeping you entertained. Now that’s a magical talent if I’ve ever seen one!

Sinners is out in cinemas now.