In 1932, identical twins Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan) come home to Mississippi with a fortune gained working for the Chicago mob.
Determined to cut ties with their past and start new, they find their new venture jeopardised, not only by the effects of Jim Crow, but by the lives they left behind.
There is also trouble on the horizon, in the shape of a mysterious drifter (Jack O’Connell) who is eager for company…
While a lot has been made of this film’s weight and cultural importance, Sinners is a genuine crowd pleaser.
This is a big screen, full-bore entertainment show.
This is a MOVIE movie.
I feel this might be copy and paste from a couple of previous reviews, but Sinners is also sexy. People have palpable chemistry and there is a lot of sex.
There is also a sensuality to the way the movie looks - shooting on film, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw gives Sinners a lush, vibrant colour palette, giving a tactility and vibrancy to the settings. This movie feels like you can smell it sweating.
This might be a scarcity reaction - big budget movies, particularly from Hollywood, can feel so anodyne and remote. This is a movie you can immerse yourself in.
Michael B. Jordan is great as the central twins, in two completely contrasting performances that also feel in lockstep with each other.
Newcomer Miles Caton makes a solid impression, and Delroy Lindo gets a meaty supporting pet as a veteran blues singer.
The real standout is Wunmi Mosaku, playing one of the twins’ former flames. She only gets a few scenes but she conveys such a sense of history, and gives the movie a different sense of pathos. This is a pretty straightforward genre picture but she gives it a gravity that adds to the stakes.
Her dynamic with Jordan is so strong it makes up for what might have been some underwritten moments - considering how things pan out.
I love that Sinners is about music - it is not a straight musical, although there are so many set pieces based around music, I was kinda depressed we did not get more.
There is a bravura sequence - already much commented on - at the centre in which the film draws together blues, rock'n'roll, hip hop and all their past influences and future forms.
This is the kind of history, immortality, that the film’s supernatural antagonist can only dream of.
Jack O’Connell’s vampire is thirsting for knowledge and talent as much as blood. Lending more weight to the film’s themes, the character is established as Irish - a colonised culture that is still poisoned by white supremacy.
This takes me to my favourite thing about the movie: its shagginess - its expansive sense of character and backstory is so engrossing, it feels like the movie setting the deck for when trouble comes to the twins’ opening night party.
While the initial build to the vampires’ ambush is suitably suspenseful, when the film turns into a siege it becomes less interesting - it feels like this part of the movie is over way too quickly.
The film then takes a while to wind down. There are good moments - including a machine gun shootout and a rather touching coda in 1992 - but it feels a little long.
The second half loses steam, but Sinners is comfortably the most entertaining movie I have seen this year.
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