A film review by Cliff Homewood
‘Let’s play a game …’ (thank you, that’s quite enough, Jigsaw. I said that’s quite enough from you!).
I’ll describe a film, you guess.
A pair of gangster brothers, one colder than the other (aren’t they always?) on the road, going somewhere to hole up. They then party at their destination. But it’s cut short by vampires.
It’s of course Sinners. My companion found the film a heck of lot funnier than me. It’s obviously a comedy and I’m missing the joke. Turned out the parallels with From Dusk ’til Dawn tickled him throughout. Ryan Coogler, the writer/director, states he was inspired by From Dusk ’til Dawn and The Faculty. The story’s different but the plot beats are the same and reading its litany of great reviews irks me: plauded for its originality in bestriding genres, yeah like From Dusk ’til Dawn!
The two brothers (both played by Michael B Jordan) aren’t distinctive enough and blend into one. What makes this film special is the setting. Placed in America in the 1930’s, rarely has there been a scarier place, with its use of music it feels somewhat like Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou Turned To Dust. It starts as a road movie through the deep south and the only thing missing is a slave being beaten by some wealthy plantation owner. We see a chain gang appearing to be singing, for a second perilously close to Song of the South with its inappropriate cheeriness, being told to ‘get on with their work’ as our heroes drive by. It’s a good moment and the nearest the film gets to showing the threat of violence they labour under. Then we have a cotton field being picked and an amusing satirical exchange of the business nature of many women.
All this I enjoyed, but it must be said it’s so slow starting, that any vampires watching would turn to dust waiting for it to get going. Sinners is 2 hours 17 mins and felt like two hours setup for a one hour pay off. From Dusk ’til Dawn’s first half is a ride and a half, but this felt interminable.
Once our fanged friends arrive it turned into a good movie. With some originality as the vampires had their own take on religion and Jack O’Connell is superb as their leader, all Irish charm, inveigling his way in. At one point it looked like they were going to ring hands around the besieged venue and sing Kumbaya, My Lord. That’s nothing you’d expect from a vampire movie but worked spectacularly. The reverie and enjoyment the vampires were getting from their own party was enticing and speeches made imploring the captive humans: tempting, ‘Why don’t you come and join us?’ Although the vampires appeared to prefer bluegrass music and their leader being of Irish descent made one think perhaps the sign ‘no blacks and no Irish’ had some merit, the Irish are vampires! I preferred the lovely blues music in the soundtrack as the venue was somewhere the brothers built for the hardworking black people to let their hair down and enjoy themselves. God they earned it.
Like the violence of the era, other things are only hinted at, the fact that the clientele can only pay in company scrip for instance. We should be well versed in the era by now, so things don’t need laying out, it has the feel of the period. It didn’t need a song such as Sixteen Tons on the soundtrack to explain, either you got it, or you didn’t and Google exists. There’s some good dialogue and plenty of great music to glory in, if you don’t like blues music, it might leave you cold. I wouldn’t mind buying the soundtrack.
And the film doesn’t end at the end, oh no, there’s a mid-credit scene and an end scene as well, I was enjoying the mythic of this story by this point.
The film’s only sins are taking to long to get going and shamelessly ripping off another film. When the vampires hit the barn I realised that I cared for these characters, the first half did its job and got me emotionally involved, it’s just a shame it took so much time about it. If Tarantino wanted he could probably successfully sue, but Tarantino has always acknowledged that his own scripts are cobbled from pieces from other movies so all is good and the tradition continues. At least Ryan Coogler did something good with it.