Sinners
B+ - "You keep dancing with the devil... one day he's gonna follow you home."
Identical twins Smoke and Stack return to their hometown, Clarksdale, Mississippi, after running with a gangster outfit in Chicago, in order to set up a Black-only juke joint. However, during its opening night celebrating Black culture, the twins and their posse face an insurmountable attack of supernatural horror.
Playing the role of the twins, Michael B. Jordan delivers a great dual performance that celebrates Black culture and utter badassery. He is supported by a fantastic ensemble cast, which draws the audience in. Jack O'Connell, as always, brings a level of malevolence that is magnetic in its gruesome nature as the film’s antagonist.
Despite a strong billing, the music is the real star of the movie. Sinners proudly emphasises the importance and power of Blackness, and this is ever-present throughout the film. Blues is used to portray the history and soul of the characters within the movie, set against the Jim Crow era. It shows how blues music is a source of strength and protection for African Americans during this time and, to an extent, forevermore. The music binds the characters together against racists as well as figures of the supernatural underworld. But it also cleverly notes that blues music plays with spiritual fire and at times in opposition to religion. Contrasting with the blues music are Irish folk songs sung by O’Connell’s character, Remmick. What I love about the music in Sinners is that it is not just there to add to the drama and intensity of the film, but it acts as a storytelling device. The songs aren’t there to add volume; they tell us what is happening, or about to happen. If anyone knows their music, they’ll definitely enjoy Sinners more than most.
People have been lauding Sinners as a landmark film that breaks technological and cultural limits. But I disagree. It’s certainly not a bad film; in fact, it is very solid. But I’m confident that over time, it will mature into a movie that is remembered for being great, not the unparalleled top-tier piece it's currently being hailed as.
The first 40 minutes of the movie are slow and follow the twins' return to their hometown, purchase an old sawmill, and assemble their team for the juke joint. It oozes cool because it heavily features Michael B. Jordan, multiplied with his twin characters strutting around being gangsters, but I did find it difficult to buy into the film early on. There are several early scenes that brutally show the grim reality of being a Black person in the Deep South during the 1930s, however. Moreover, there is a peculiar scene at the juke joint where the heavily packed crowd and performers lose themselves in an all-Black musical montage tracing from African tribal music right through to the hip hop of the modern era. I somewhat struggled to understand this scene. Structurally, the scene is in part a calling on the evil spirits and echoes the mythology of Robert Johnson’s going down to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil. But it loses tonal cohesion for the film.
For all the raving about how and why Black culture is important, once the supernatural turns up, all of that Black celebration goes out the window. Sinners becomes a stock-standard, yet entertaining, horror flick. The early scenes are still good, but we end up with a film with two distinctly different tones. It is bookended with this homage to Black culture overcoming the trials of the Deep South. But the meat of this film is gothic fantasy. So much so, the last few scenes seem exhausted, not to mention the post-credit scenes that feel excessive.
The fanfare over how well they achieved Jordan’s two performances so seamlessly, I get it, it's good! But it's not much better than Tom Hardy’s efforts in Legend, which is 10 years older and, on the whole, a better film involving twins played by the same actor. But for all my nitpicking, Sinners is a really good film that provides two hours of entertainment and thrills. Importantly, it is causing people to talk about cinema. A movie like this seems to only come along every few years and is helping people to go out to the movies again to see a very good original story, which isn’t a bloated franchise or existing IP from Mattel.
Perhaps I am being woefully unfair to Sinners. I might need to watch it a second time, and a third time, to let it sink in. And if I am returning to a film wanting to know more, then perhaps it is 2025’s Citizen Kane...