Is there something going on right now where a lot of movies have actors playing off each other? Theo James did it as very different identical twins in The Monkey. Robert Pattinson did it as clones in Mickey 17. Robert De Niro did it for no clear reason in The Alto Knights. And now, Michael B. Jordan is doing it for Ryan Coogler’s latest, the music-and-blood period piece Sinners. Is there a reason for so many of these actors playing off themselves? I mean, it does look like there are reasons for most of them to do so.
I still don’t know why De Niro did it, though.
It’s 1932 in rural Mississippi, and the Smoke brothers (both Jordan, introduced in a really cool effect sharing a cigarette) are back after spending time fighting in the first World War and in Chicago gang wars. Very similar in many ways, brother Smoke stands ramrod straight while looking to only earn real money while arranging for ex-lover and mother of his late child Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to be a cook for the brothers’ latest venture, while other brother Stack is slightly more laid back, a bit more fiery, and has his own issues with his ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a longtime associate of the local black community due to her mixed race family. Meanwhile, the brothers also recruit their musically-talented young cousin Sammy (newcomer Miles Caton) and alcoholic Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play music for their big party, opening up a juke joint in an old mill. Combine all that with large sharecropper Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) as a bouncer and a local Chinese couple (Yao and Li Jun Li) to provide food from their grocery store, and it looks like they might be off to a good start.
It may actually be too good as the movie establishes early that some musicians are so talented, they can pierce the veil between the living and the dead, and Sammy is that good when he’s playing the blues. He’s so good, he attracts the attention of an ancient evil, an Irish vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a being that starts “recruiting” more of his kind even before he gets to the Smoke brothers’ place. The one thing the brothers and the other initial survivors have going for them is they need to be invited in before they can come inside, but they’re a patient bunch, and as people head outside for one reason or another, Remmick is adding to his numbers. Can the survivors hold out long enough for the sun to come out?
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: yes, this movie does have a lot in common with From Dusk til Dawn. Two criminal brothers in a happening nightspot, people trapped in said nightspot because they are surrounded by vampires, and some really colorful characters tossed in for good luck. The big difference From Dusk til Dawn played the action a lot less seriously. There’s humor in Sinners, but it’s not really a comedy, and the movie does have some twists on the vampire legend of its own, and it is still Mississippi in 1932, and the Smoke brothers do have concerns about the local Klan and the like. It’s also worth noting that the vampires don’t really show up until the halfway point, making the movie more of a period piece drama and a tribute to music.
And yes, that tribute isn’t limited to the blues. This movie loves music of all kinds, and even the vampires can enjoy a good tune when the mood strikes. This may be the first time that I saw something on an IMAX screen where I think I appreciated the music more than I did whatever visuals that were going on on the giant screen, and I sat through a psychedelic David Bowie documentary there once. Coogler’s got something unique here, something that works in a way that suggests the writer/director might be the only one who could have told this story. Coogler and Jordan tend to bring out the best in each other, and while I would not call Sinners their best collaboration, it’s a good sight better, if nothing else, than the other movies I mentioned above when actors were playing dual roles. I didn’t have “Ryan Coogler horror movie” on my bingo card for 2025, but I sure am glad I got it. About the worst I can say is it runs a little too long, and if that’s my only complaint, I must have had a good time.
Grade: A-
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