Film review – Sinners

My notes on Sinners (NB: slight spoilers)

In 1932, scarred, traumatised Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) lurches into his father’s church on Sunday morning, clutching the neck of a guitar – his preacher Dad wants him to drop the guitar and join a hymn, but no matter how terrible the recent memories associated with the broken instrument are, he just can’t leave hold … then, we flash back to day earlier and back-in-town twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), who went through WWI and gangster times in Chicago, set about throwing a party in a jook … renting a barn from a white guy unsubtly named Hogwood (David Maldonaldo – an on-the-nose name in itself) we just know is going to be Wizard of the Klan, recruiting musicians (Delroy Lindo as a blues guy) and a bouncer (Omar Miller), buying catfish, stashing booze which might have been stolen from two Chitown factions (Italian wine and Irish beer).  Soap subplots accrue to the twins, in the shapes of a nearly-white gal (Hailee Steinfeld) and a voodoo priestess (Wunmi Mosaku) they take up with again.  Sammie, the twins’ nephew, will later say that before the sun went down, this was the best day of his life – a taste of freedom.

As soon as the party kicks off, we’re on a countdown to disaster.  Will Al Capone’s mob come after their wine?  Are the Klan intent on massacring folks having fun?  Can the hight spirits be let off the leash without some blood being spilled?  Then, the vampires show up – with echoes of From Dusk Till Dawn, Near Dark and Dr Sleep.  Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish drifter with fangs, is drawn to the music (a prologue has established the mythology).  Trailing two newmade backing musicians, Remmick tries to secure an invitation to cross the threshold.  Smoke and Stack aren’t that foolish, though they possibly don’t expect just not asking a white guy in will actually keep him out – but the party crowd stray, and plenty get bitten.  It’s a rich mess of a film, with thematic meat to chew over amid its genre pleasures … a musical number which ought to be pretentious but isn’t has Sammie’s guitar invoking the future history of black music as rappers, hip-hop, rock n roll and jazzmen appear in the crowd, which extends to Chinese and Native American folk forms … and there’s plenty of biting, chewing, scarring and staking action, with an all-in Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires vibe.

Writer-director Ryan Coogler has worked a lot with Jordan, who stresses similarities as well as differences between the twins, but here gives real showcases fo Caton, O’Connell, Mosaku, Steinfeld and a lot of vivid supporting characters.  Buddy Guy shows up as Old Sammie in an epilogue set c Def By Temptation. It has script issues, or at least that Jordan Peele sense of skipping over some parts of the foundation to hurry on to the good stuff, then not being able to resist throwing in surplus material like a whole tommy gun rampage after the story is pretty much over just because it’s fun to stage.  I get that the Klan had a plan, but was the vampire just making it up?  Either way, the folks at the party were going to get massacred.  Were the Klan couple incidentally great bluegrass performers – which might be why the vampire turned them – or does being bitten transform you into a good musician? … If so, why did none of the others turned vampire suddenly get talented?  Apart from doing Irish dancing, I couldn’t quite see why Remmick was bad – everyone he bit got better … Only for the non-vampire twin to kill them all, excepting a favourite few in a way which makes staking all his other friends kind of callous.  Oh, and no one seems to have seen Dracula – a big hit movie in 1931 – but are aware of lore from The Lost Boys, which didn’t come out till 1987.

It’s as much about storytelling as music, which may be why the blues is its dominant form.  It opens up the frame to IMAX when the music is swinging.