Sinners
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“If you keep dancing with the devil, one day he's gonna follow you home”
Overview
Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) reunites with Creed star Michael B Jordon in the bloody and bold Sinners, a rare gem of a blockbuster with the heart of an indie film. The year is 1932, and identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Jordan in a double role) have returned to their Mississippi Delta home with plans to put the money lifted from Chicago gangsters to good use: opening a juke joint that will serve the local Black community. They recruit Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to cook and their gifted young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) as a musical act, despite his father's grave warnings about blues music being a conduit for the supernatural. On opening night the joint is jumping, but the arrival of a mysterious (and very pale) stranger who is really keen to be invited inside triggers an explosion of violence that may leave no survivors.
“Sinners gives sensuous, supernatural, often electrifying expression to the belief that we’re all simultaneously captive to our histories and capable of so much more”
“A big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies”
“It’s both a wildly ambitious meditation on American history and a rip-roaring good time”
Why See This Film
While his filmmaking skills were never in doubt Coogler shows here a pleasantly surprising reverence for horror stories: there are rich veins of humour throughout but a refreshing absence of irony and smirk, instead warmly embracing the outlandish premise and playing it totally straight. Alongside this respect for genre cinema is a deep and abiding appreciation for the blues and Black culture, assisted by Ludwig Göransson's phenomenal score and a genre-defying eclectic mixture of song and dance. Heady and intoxicating with moments of poignant reflection, Sinners is a good old fashioned time at the movies.
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