Sinners Movie Review - Brothers Against The Brood
In the modern age of Hollywood, remakes, sequels, reboots, and adaptations of books and video games are all the rage. Whenever Hollywood has lost all sense of creative thinking for blockbusters towards or during the summer movie season, companies will think to themselves: how are we going to make gangbusters? Well, let’s make a live-action remake of a modern animated phenomenon to bank off of everyone’s nostalgia. A video game adaptation where we provide the bare minimum for fans of the game. Let’s reboot a franchise or film for the sake of reminding the audience just how it was back then rather than focusing on continuing the journey respectfully. And while we’re at it, let’s make more cash-grab sequels to franchises that don’t need one. And it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood runs out of books to adapt into movies. Just wait until we get an adaptation of one of Onision’s books. Yeah, isn’t that a horrifying thought?
Thankfully, there are filmmakers who will go out of their way to divert from the money-grubbing formula of wasteful remakes, nostalgia-infested reboots, needless sequels, or putrid game and book adaptations and finally put forth an original project that may derive from other stories (since there exist several films that are derivations of other stories in Hollywood), but is able to spawn innovation or invention in its chosen genre whether be sci-fi, horror, animation, or action based on the creator’s imaginative and original ideas. Take, for example, our latest subject of today’s review, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners”. It’s an action horror film about a group trying to survive one night against a gang of vampires. It’s not the most original concept, but Coogler’s ability to derive from inspired horror media such as John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, “30 Days of Night”, “Dog Soldiers” and “From Dusk Till Dawn”, while inoculating his own vision into the fold. And what you get from “Sinners” is a pretty good, albeit self-indulgent movie.
In 1932 Mississippippi, twin brothers and World War I veterans Smoke and Stack decided to start a local juke joint business for the black community that resides. Along for the ride is their cousin Sammie, an aspiring blues artist who goes against his pastor father’s words of playing the devil’s music. The twins begin hiring local shopkeepers, off-the-street musicians like Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim, and security for their joint and begin business on opening night. Everything is going fantastic, the guests are dancing, our leads meet up with some familiar faces and everything is going just as expected. But along comes a trio of folk musicians led by Irishman Remmick, who wants to join in on all the fun. But when horror strikes, it is revealed that Remmick and his musical partners are vampires. The gang starts picking off victims one by one, and it’s up to the survivors to face off against the bloodsucking undead until sunrise.
As mentioned, the concept of the movie on its face is something we’ve seen in passing before. A group of individuals find themselves in a pickle when they come face to face with mythological monsters and they have to fight them off in order to survive. However, what holds ‘Sinners’ up is the character writing and development. The film does a great job at highlighting the struggles and desires of our two main leads in a rural 1930s Mississippi during the Prohibition era desperately trying to make a living for their community. It puts both Smoke and Stack through the challenges of stealing money from gangsters in Chicago (referring to Al Capone’s gangster empire), arranging deals with racist landowners, and handling past relationships—both with a past love and their familial bond with Preacher Boy Sammie, and the script gives them so depth makes you hope that they both survive when things go south.
To top it off, it’s gratefully enforced by the performance of the ever-so-talented Michael B. Jordan portraying both Smoke and Stack. The way he is able to treat the twins with diverse personalities and motivations is simply flawless. He seamlessly transforms into the roles and is able to make both performances shine without making one performance superior to the other. Jordan’s electrifying, hilarious demeanor as the rapscallion Stack is equally as perfect as the stern, collected Smoke.
Coogler like his later films, knows how to get the best performances from his cast members. Delroy Lindo is stellar and hilarious as the rusty pianist Delta Slim, Haliee Steinfeld is tremendous, even at times flirtatious as Stack’s ex-girlfriend, Mary and it can’t go without saying the Jack O’Connell’s performance as the Irish cult-leading vampire is intimidating as he is sadistically charismatic.
One of the most brilliant parts of Sinners is the soundtrack. Ludwig Göransson, composer of Coogler’s Black Panther movies is at it again with a score that combines southern blues, with chilling elements of rock. During the terror at nighttime, the electric guitar and percussion come down like a bolt of lightning striking fear in the hearts of our viewers.
However, one of Sinners’ greatest strengths is also one of its weaknesses. The film has a spectacular one-take shot of a scene where Sammie’s music has become so transcendent, that it awakens the spirits throughout history, showing how it transformed from the past and gave way to the music of our present. The film keeps up a steady beat and rhythm, and the spirits of our present showcase the evolution of genres such as rap and rock/metal work peerlessly. But by the time we get to the more traditional folk music from distant African cultures, it loses that blues beat established in the beginning of Preacher Boy’s transcendental music. Not to mention that the single tracking shot, while commendable and coordinated well, kinda goes on for far too long and it loses its momentum by the time the scene is almost over.
However, for those who are describing this movie as flawless, it’s best we put down the rose-colored glasses and be honest with ourselves that the film has some sins of its own. While the script does a solid job with its characters and how they contribute to the plot, the film has points taken off when left with a gaping plot hole that could’ve effectively ended this entire film. I won’t spoil it, but it involves an elaborate plot by the Ku Klux Klan that makes you think, “Wouldn’t it just make sense for them to do it this way instead of doing what they did in the film?”
And for how wicked the action set-pieces are (especially during the final climax), the scenes themselves have some points deducted because our primary character(s) have severe plot armor where the villains refuse to do the obvious thing by biting our protagonists in the arm while in a chokehold and only become vulnerable when we need a moment of suspense to happen, or when a main character gets into a stand-off with a massive gang and bullets can’t seem to hit him until he finally gets hurt after the majority of the attackers have been killed.
The final thing I want to point out is how he inserts this mid-credits sequence, which serves as an epilogue as to what happened to those who survived the havoc as we cut all the way to 1992–60 years later. The problem is that before we even get to see the epilogue, the end credits start to roll all the way till we see the end title screen causing many people in the auditorium to leave the theater without a clue as to what happened afterward. The execution of the mid-credits scene in Sinner is like if in “Return of the King” after everyone bowed to the hobbits in Minas Tirith, we cut to the beginning of the end credits and after we get to a film by Peter Jackson’ we get to see all the stuff that happened to the hobbits afterward.
Sinners doesn’t change the game with the horror action genre and can be pretty self-indulgent, but it’s a legitimately enjoyable thriller that compensates with sinister cinematography, A-grade performances from an all-star cast, and entertaining set pieces.
RATING: 3.5/5
