I’m always excited for new Ryan Coogler films. His work on the groundbreaking Black Panther franchise shows his commitment to authentic storytelling and highlights often-overlooked Black narratives.
Coogler’s collaboration with Michael B. Jordan continues in their fifth film, Sinners.
Set in the 1930s in Mississippi, it focuses on a black community’s drive to thrive and survive despite the Klan’s ever-looming threat.
Jordan is on double duty here, playing the Smokestack twins, Smoke and Stack. It is 1932, the brothers return home to Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town they left years earlier to fight in World War I.
They survived the trenches and moved to Chicago. There, they became gangsters and are now home with wads of cash and crates full of stolen Irish beer and Italian wine. They buy a plot of land and open a juke t.
The film follows one long, heady day as they prepare for their grand opening. Good musicians are key to their success, so they call upon their young cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), who sings the blues so well it feels heaven sent - but his father, a preacher, says blues is the devil’s work.
They also need Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), a musician who has a fondness for alcohol but has blues in his soul. They call upon Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao), a Chinese couple who run the main Clarksdale grocery store, to help out, and Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller), a big, burly sharecropper, to act as security for opening night.
As they spend the day rounding up their cohort, we see a side of America we rarely see on screen.
We never see Asian immigrants owning shops in the 1930s, but of course, they did. We don’t see Black men portrayed as people with money, fine suits, and fancy cars, but people like Smoke and Stack lived and breathed in all parts of America, and it is refreshing to see them depicted on the screen.
When Smoke left Clarksdale, he left Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a woman he hasn’t stopped loving. The twins need Annie’s famous cooking skills, and she agrees to help. While Smoke is happy to reunite with his love, Stack tries to avoid his ex-girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld).
As their day continues and the bar is almost ready for opening, Annie’s voice echoes over the action. She speaks of myths and legends that run through all cultures, African, Native American, and Irish, about musicians who play music with such clarity and sing with such beauty that their sounds can open a veil between the past, the present, and the future.
As the bar heaves with customers, Sammie sings and plays the guitar. The blues is in every fibre of his body, so strong that the veil appears as Coogler, in a bold move, introduces a frenetic and heady dance sequence that crosses genres and periods as the past, present, and future converge into something akin to a religious experience.
This convergence calls to a wandering vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who has a sweet southern drawl but an Irish soul. By the time this blues-filled film erupts into an Irish song and dance sequence, I almost roared, “What the hell is going on?” But I didn’t care about the bonkers nature of the scene. I was so caught up in this rapturous moment that I lost all sense of reality. I felt like I was in the centre of a crazy, glorious whirlwind.
As Remmick brings more vampires to the party, things turn bloody and gory, but Smoke and Stack have already fought in a war, Delta has seen the worst of humanity, and Sammie has just learned what it means to be alive, so they fight and fight, but will they survive the night?
Lindo brings such grace and poignancy to Delta. He is often drunk, but he is no bumbling fool. He is a man who suffers great pain. Alcohol and music are the only things holding him together, and Lindo plays him beautifully.
Newcomer Caton is superb as Sammie. We will see much more of him in the future. As for Jordan, his dual roles are extremely nuanced. Smoke and Stack are so in sync that they almost breathe together, but Jordan gives them subtle differences. Masterclass stuff.
Coogler builds such a vibrant world that I want to see more of it. I want to see Smoke and Stack in Chicago earning their money. I want to see how Remmick became a vampire.
Dynamic and sexy, Sinners is a genre-defying masterpiece that pulsates with energy and life and pitch perfect performances. More please. Five stars.
