#review: Does Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan live up to the hype?

David Ho reviews Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan in a literal twin role

Sinners is shaking up the box office as a musical and supernatural tale of a day in Jim Crow era Mississippi. Set in 1932, the film follows Sammie (played by newcomer Miles Caton and later by blues legend Buddy Guy), a young cotton picker, is itching to leave his strict pastor father to be a musician. Despite warnings from his father about blues music having supernatural ties, Sammie agrees to perform for his cousins, the gangster twins Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan in a Gemini role), who have returned from Chicago to open a juke joint for the Black community on a property bought from a racist landowner.

Stack and Sammie head downtown to promote the grand opening of the juke joint and end up attracting quite a crowd and a crew for the evening. Smoke reconnects with his wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) and she agrees to join them as a cook.

In the meantime, an Irish vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) is on the run from Indigenous vampire hunters. He turns a local KKK-affiliated couple into vampires and the trio end up being attracted to Sammie’s music, which is said to pierce the veil between the living and the dead.

At its core, Sinners is a story about the Black experience during the Great Migration, which saw African Americans moving en masse from the south to other parts of the U.S. Writer and director Ryan Coogler already has a great track record of translating that on to celluloid (or IMAX film in this case), with films like Fruitvale Station, Creed and the Black Panther movies. For his fifth collaboration with Michael B. Jordan, Coogler was inspired by his late uncle’s stories of Mississippi as he listened to blues music.

Also see: #review: Is Disney's Snow White the fairest remake of them all?

Music plays a huge part in this movie. Coogler’s decision to tap another frequent collaborator, Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, pays off in spades. There are many a soulful, hip swivelling music moments in the film, much of which was recorded live and performed by the cast with blues musicians. A particular scene where Sammie’s guitar playing and singing transcends time and brings forth spirits of past and future to his present is very noteworthy and might just be what nabs the film some wins come awards season.      

The first half of the film is strong, oscillating between the tension of what lies ahead and funky performances. But the second half stumbles as it pivots into a blood bath. While the vampires are clearly an allegory for the very real dangers of white supremacists, the end results of the final faceoff is semi-comical and somewhat silly, marred by too much dialogue. Still, one has to admire the ambition it takes to marry a twangy historical piece with Nosferatu-inspired horror.

Beyond the music, what also makes the film tick are the cast and how their characters reveal so much of the times. Stack and his white-passing ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) are ripped apart by the social currents of that era; Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) is driven to the comforts at the bottom of a bottle after a friend gets framed and lynched; the overlooked struggles of the early Asian diaspora on the social margins is highlighted with the Chows (Yao, Li Jun Li, and Helena Hu); and the Black community that attend the juke joint yearn for an evening of joy despite a system of exploitation that pays them with ‘plantation money’ (currency locked in only to specific plantation stores).  

Even though the characters are clearly fictional, it’s not a stretch to imagine there are similar true tales from that era. Coogler succeeds in his mission of telling stories of the south as a tribute to his uncle, even if its delivered with a (vampiric) bite.  

Verdict: Sinners is an entertaining watch in the cinema where the music and eerie atmosphere can be best experienced. Do note that there are two scenes to watch at the end, one mid- and the other post-credit.  

Also see: #review: Is the Marvel’s Thunderbolts an electrifying watch?