Sinners movie review: Music is the elixir in Michael B Jordan’s gripping Southern horror

In a town of Mississippi, where rows and rows of white cotton plantations stretching out into the horizon hide the Blacks working day and night in them to meet their quota of sharecropping, what stirs the uneasy quiet is the return of two prodigals – twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Jordan). The reputation of the twins precedes them in this Jim Crow land, circa 1932, for having broken the rules of the game to rise as minor gangsters in Al Capone’s mafia world.

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Soon as they arrive, bearing lots of cash and enough guns, Smoke and Stack buy a sawmill from a suspected Ku Klux Klan member and announce their plans to start a juke joint there. They are not wasting time, and go about having the club up and running by that same evening, turning to old friends (such as the harmonica playing Lindo) and their guitar-strumming cousin Sammie (Canton, a singer making his acting debut) to provide the night’s entertainment, and others to prepare the signs and decorations.

Smoke and Stack also rekindle their old flames in the town – Annie (Mosaku) and Mary (Steinfeld), respectively.

It’s when the night is in full swing, amidst a whole lot of shaking and schmoozing and more, that the horrors the twins are determined to keep out of their establishment come stalking in taking a new, dangerous form.

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A snarling O’Connell leads that group, strumming about Ireland’s natural beauty under Mississippi’s full moon and quiet night, as beautifully as hinting at the danger lurking under his smooth talk.

While O’Connell strives to impress, Jordan is effortless as the two men from whom we can’t tear our eyes away, who are as many parts good, grieving men trying to do some good as cool-headed businessmen trying to make easy cash. Jordan packs charisma as much as raw strength, and the two mingle blazingly here.

The others have barely anything to do, except Lindo, who has a beautiful moment when he chances upon slaves condemned to hard labour working on a road, and tells the tale of his association with them and how it was torn apart.

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That O’Connell’s bloodsucking villainy is a metaphor for racial exploitation, that goodness can mean little in such a world, that even the doors you shut literally can’t keep out the evil, that the alliances you seek carry their own consequences, is obvious. The horror can be a bit too fantastical, the violence dragged out, the sex gratuitous, but where this film’s virtuosity lies is how it uses music to make connections and dissonances.

Sammy’s haunting singing and guitar playing are as much a disruptor to the “order of things” in this town, as are Smoke and Stack’s gun-toting strongmen. Is there any way to make it out of here other than striking “a deal with the devil”, as a blues musician from these parts actually supposedly did? And, who exactly is that devil?

Sinners wants us to think, and think hard.

Sinners movie director: Ryan Coogler
Sinners movie cast: Michael B Jordan, Miles Canton, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Li Jun Li, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku
Sinners movie rating: 3.5 stars