Sinners
When Sammie Moore (H.E.R.backup singer Miles Caton in his film debut) walks into his preacher father's Church clutching the remains of a guitar, his face marked with bloody claw marks, Jedidiah (Saul Williams, "Blink Twice") orders him to drop the instrument which he had warned the boy can lure the devil and turn the faithful into "Sinners."
Laura's Review: A-
Writer/director Ryan Coogler ("Fruitvale Station," "Black Panther") has done the nigh impossible with a career high that will both entertain the masses while delivering a trenchant political statement for those who care to find one. The movie boasts an incredibly talented ensemble comprised of newcomers and industry veterans, dazzling musical sequences and period authenticity in a movie that plays like the legend of blues musician Robert Johnson having sold his soul to the devil crossed with Roberto Rodriguez' "From Dusk Til Dawn" vampire rampage informed by the historical perspective of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The movie is both lusty and soulful, Hailee Steinfeld and Jayme Lawson representing the former, Nigerian English actress Wunmi Mosaku the latter. Michael B. Jordan creates two sides of the same coin in the cleverly named, ambitious SmokeStack twins while Miles Caton breaks big as their naive younger cousin.
After that disturbing opener, Sammie's startling, blood stained shamble in stark contrast to angelic sharecropper children dressed all in white, Coogler takes us back twenty-four hours when Smoke and Stack drove into Clarksdale, Mississippi with a truckload of goods, their mob arms and wads of cash. It is 1932 and they're returned from Al Capone's Chicago to buy an old sawmill and open a juke joint that very night. After warning the fat old white man they've purchased the building from that should he or any of his KKK friends cross their property line they'll be summarily shot, they head into town and begin to round up provisions from local grocers Grace (Li Jun Li, "Babylon") and Bo Chow (Yao) and musicians like their surprisingly talented cousin and harmonica player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo, "Da 5 Bloods"). Stack, who sports a red fedora, has an uncomfortable meeting with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld, "Edge of Seventeen"), his sexually precocious old flame who wants to resume the relationship she's waited for. Smoke, distinguished by his blue cap, visits the grave of his baby boy Elijah and is reunited with his lover, Hoodoo conjurer Annie (Wunmi Mosaku, "His House"), who he engages for the evening's catfish fry after their old sparks fly. After scooping Cornbread (Omar Miller, "8 Mile") up out of the cotton fields to act as doorman, the twins reunite and everyone gets to work for the big opening like one joyous, sprawling community, the sign Grace has painted announcing 'Smoke and Stack's' over the door.
But meanwhile, in another part of town, we'll see Irishman Remmick (Jack O'Connell, "Unbroken," "Back to Black"), smoke rising from his burnt back, begging a stranger to let him into her house before the Choctaw Indians kill him. Joan (Lola Kirke, TV's 'Mozart in the Jungle') lets him in, but a Choctaw arrives to warn her that this man is not what he appears and when the woman whose home sports KKK hoods goes to find her husband Bert (Peter Dreimanis, rock band July Talk lead) she finds a horrifying scene.
As the juke joint starts to jump, Mary, the film's bridge between black and white (for better and for worse), arrives to reclaim Stack while Sammie is smitten by the married Pearline (Jayme Lawson, "The Batman"). Cornbread admits a crowd anxious to down the Smokestack twins' Irish beer and Italian wine and sweat up a storm, but when three white Irish musicians show up at the door, his suspicions prove warranted.
Coogler's really surpassed himself here, spinning so many plates without dropping a single one, his editor Michael P. Shawver ("Black Panther") adroitly weaving us in and out of dance partners and genres. If Sammie/Preacher Boy, playing composer Ludwig Goransson's ("Black Panther") 1930s Dobro Cyclops accompanied by his own deep, rich voice gets the black locals moving and shaking inside, Remmick will lead a raucous crowd outdoors, dancing an Irish jig to traditional tunes joined by the unfortunates who unwittingly ventured outside. They are like competing tornados about to merge into one superstorm. And while some have not been invited in because Annie became wise to their identity, one escapes notice and soon all hell has literally broken loose.
That juke joint dance extravaganza is also notable for the musical history Coogler threads in with tribal African players, a hip hop DJ and a Chinese dancer from the Monkey King opera, all outfitted by Ruth Carter, "Black Panther's" Oscar winning costume designer. It's an audacious move he makes work, as if they're ghosts of the past and future commenting on the community celebrating here. Production designer Hannah Beachler ("Black Panther") captures the place and time with attention to the smallest detail. Director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw's ("Black Panther") work is especially fluid, notable considering she shot with larger, heavier 65mm IMAX cameras. Ludwig Goransson not only celebrates the blues within his score, but has written original songs, like Sammie's 'Lied to You.'
"Sinners" is quite an achievement, a bluesy vampire period piece that will make you want to sing and dance, to scream, to mourn and to think. It is simply the best movie to arrive at multiplexes so far this year.
Warner Brothers releases "Sinners" in theaters on 4/18/25.
