Sinners (2025)
16 Academy Award nominations? Really? Is is that good a movie?
We're here to tell you yes.....with some reservations.
Writer-director Ryan Coogler ("Black Panther") crafted a sweeping, wildly ambitious early 20th century epic musical/action/drama/horror film that covers black culture attempting to survive and flourish..... even in the dark heart of the Jim Crow 1930's Deep South of Mississippi.
It's that horror part that some critics and viewers have had a hard time with......
The first half of the film sets up what an audience expects to become a propulsive melodrama that won't flinch away from the worst excesses left over from the Civil War.
Identical twins 'Smoke' and 'Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) have come back to the region that birthed them.......but only after somehow living through the bloody trenches of World I and holding their own on the bullet riddled streets of gangland Chicago. Together, they're more than ready to go toe to toe with by the Ku Klux Klan.
Using the spoils they've taken from Windy City mobsters, they've purchased an abandoned sawmill from a local KKK bigwig, turning it into a local dance 'n drink all night 'juke joint'.
And the joint's star attraction will be legendary pianist Delta Slim(Oscar nominated Delroy Lindo) and their young cousin Sammie, so gifted a blues guitarist that his music has the power to break the borders of time and space.....and create a supernatural rip that'll let loose who knows what demonic forces.
And here's where Coogler takes his film and cast into a 360 left turn from heated melodrama to gory horror.
Because in addition to the brutal Klan, also rampaging around the area is Irish vampire Remmick (a wildly entertaining and dangerous performance by Jack O' Connell).
As the twins' crowded joint really starts jumpin', Sammie's musical abilities do in fact warp time, in a show stopping bravura sequence that suddenly populates the 1930's dance floor with African American music and performers from every era of world history....
But the music also attracts the sly vampiric Remmick, a seductive Irish folk musician in his own right, and his newly converted white trash bloodsuckers, who use Stack's white ex girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) to gain entry into the joint.....and all bloody hell breaks out, with very few of the cast left alive.
Whatever you may think of Coogler's decision to abruptly turn his film into a southern fried 'From Dusk Til Dawn', there's no denying his visual creative skills It's filmmaking that revels in the visual power of its images and makes 'Sinners' an exhilarating experience to watch......(which probably explains why Academy Award voters were so taken with it.)
Maybe the film's a coulda-woulda-shoulda wanna-be that threw away its chance to become a dramatic powerhouse grounded in reality. But there's no denying that its swing into fantasy and pulpy Tarantino-like carnage probably gained it way more attention and a far wider audience.....not to mention big box office bucks.
And BQ did get a hell of kick out it.....
4 stars (****).
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