Sinners // Film Review

Twelve years after Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler has finally returned from the franchised nation of Wakanda, carrying in tow a chunky $90 million budget for his troubles. The Black Panther director has been open about the fact he hasn't till now been able to tell an original story on the big screen, instead grappling with Hollywood ambassadors and grown men in caps. Even Fruitvale has to work within the confines of true history, which is all to say that Sinners is the average viewer's first time seeing an unbound, novel Coogler production.

The resulting project  - a grisly and gutsy Southern folk ballad - is likely not the auteuristic vision many expected, but it is all the same a very welcome homecoming for one of Hollywood’s most promising young directors. Based on the early box office projections, it seems likely that Coogler has secured himself a blank cheque afforded to precious few filmmakers in recent memory. And what a way to earn it.

The word ballad is key here - Ludwig Goransson’s score is the lifeblood of Sinners, playing through every scene, whether it be over dialogue or across transitions, in moments of both tense and calm, consequently affording the film a rhythmic pace fitting its clubhouse setting. Although it takes the guts of an hour to fulfil the more vampiric end of its premise, the film flows from beat to beat with such inviting musicality that immersion is all but guaranteed; this is the rare world you won’t ever want to leave.

Beyond sheer craft, the musical conceit is especially appropriate for the type of story Coogler is trying to tell here. Sinners is a mythic tale, and not just for the vampires skulking in its shadows. Framed as a day-and-night in the lives of hulking entrepreneurs Smoke and Stack (Michael B Jordan), Sinners endeavours to turn the brothers into figures of legend, taking full advantage of Jordan’s physique, Goransson’s score and a deliriously heightened third act to create a force every bit as heroic as T’Challa, albeit with a touch more fire and rage.

Jordan really is exceptional here - even if his twin characters do operate under 'Mario Bros' logic with the red and blue caps - but Coogler is wise to build a steady ensemble around him, emphasising the theme of duality at every turn. Hailee Steinfeld is delightfully camp as both incarnations Mary, while newcomer Miles Caton and an exquisitely sinister Jack O'Connell stand tall as the respective angel and demon of the piece. These characters all work to inform Smoke and Stack, who are both embued with a stoicism rare of today's wise-cracking quippers; they feel timeless in that sense, which is precisely the point.

Sinners is about the legacies of said champions, and the communities they represent, immortalised across history through song and dance. And while Coogler’s return to original material is primarily an intelligent work of folklore, it also happens to be a riotously entertaining myth in its own right. You’ll gasp, you’ll cry, and in the end you’ll come away wondering how on Earth he managed to do that with a guitar.