NIGHT FEVER
Main Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton
Director: Ryan Coogler
I decided to watch some recent film of military maneuvers so I could see how our brave boys and girls in uniform handle basics such as keeping the beat and foot and arm positions. A little googling led me to some film of a recent military parade and let me just say that we’re going to have a lot of work to do to get a synchronous tap number out of the currently deployed. I’m not sure what they teach in basic training these days but Dance 101 does not appear to be on the curriculum so I figured that this morning’s assemblage in Pershing Square to teach the initial steps for a simple routine that everyone in the country can do in unison under the DOGETTE (Department of Getting Everyone to Tap Together Eventually) banner would have to start at the beginning.
I arrived at the appointed time of 8 am to find that a tap platform made of translucent plexiglass had been assembled and attached to a construction crane. In this way I could be hoisted up into the air so all could see me and the see-through material would allow everyone to see my legs and feet and follow my sterling example. I was dressed in adorable red, white and blue stripe satin tap shorts, sheer stockings with just enough rhinestone trim to keep them interesting and my very best tap shoes with lovely silver bows. I was a sight. The crane hauled my platform up to a height where I could be seen by the assembled crowd and I launched into the basics of both the single- and double-time step. Unfortunately, after just a few minutes, half my pupils were called away to Macarthur Park (something about it melting and thick green icing) while the other half were called into a tense standoff with a bunch of angry looking citizens yelling about ice. Why they didn’t just go buy some bags at the 7-11 I don’t know. That’s what I do.
Anyway, my crane operator vanished in the turmoil, and I was stuck dangling fifteen feet off the ground for several hours. My nerves were shot, and I found it necessary to return home to Condo Maine, take a cool shower and then repair to the home theater in order to find a film to help me unwind. In looking at the newer offerings on various streaming services, I ran across a film, Sinners, about which I had heard some positive buzz earlier in the year but which I had not yet had a chance to see. I poured myself a very large vodka tonic, opened a package of double- stuff Oreos and settled in for a few hours of escapism.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the bastard child of The Color Purple and From Dusk to Dawn wasn’t it. I ended up rather enjoying the film for what it was but it is necessary to approach it with a bit of an open mind as we rocket along from standard horror fare to vampires doing a musical number lifted from the bus and truck tour of Riverdance. How does this all fit together? I’m not certain I can fully explain.
Sinners starts with young Sammie (Miles Caton) entering his father’s church with the broken neck of a guitar and scars along his face. The time is 1932, the place is the rural South, and we have seen this scene of the prodigal returning to the rural African American church in dozens of other films. There is no explanation – we just jump cut to the previous morning when Sammie and his guitar meet up with twins, known as Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan in a tour de force performance) who have bought an old barn in order to quickly convert it to a Juke Joint with Sammie, a talented blues musician, as entertainer.
Smoke and Stack, recently returned from making good in Chicago, go about the business of getting their club up and running in record time with ruthless efficiency enlisting other townsfolk including their exes Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) who knows a thing or two about hoodoo and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), and the Chinese couple who run the grocery store (Li Jun Li and Yao). They also come up with a doorman from the cotton fields (Omar Benson Miller), an older musician (Delroy Lindo), and an older woman with whom Sammie is smitten, Pearline (Jayme Lawson).
As the sun goes down, the community gathers at the Juke Joint for music and revelry. However, nearby, an Irish stranger (Jack O’Connell) shows up at the door of a poor white couple (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) claiming to be on the run from a band of local Choctaw Indians. He turns out to be a vampire and turns the couple as the sun goes down. Meanwhile, Sammie’s musicianship is such that the music transcends time and place. As the dancing at the Juke Joint gets more frenzied, past and future bleed in and we see modern African American musicians and also ancestral musicians and dancers among the crowd. Unfortunately, this preternatural signal also draws our vampire trio to the door, and they want to be invited in to join the fun. Blood, gore and mayhem ensue. Which of our intrepid heroes will survive the night? (We know Sammie does – we’ve already seen him the next day). And what of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan that doesn’t take kindly to African American entertainment businesses?
Once we get into the vampire plot, the beats and plot twists are all fairly predictable but there’s just enough twists on the tropes to keep you engaged and wondering what’s coming next, especially by the time we get to the vampire hoedown mentioned above. Sinners is deftly written and directed by Ryan Coogler, best known for Black Panther. As he did in that film, he puts a uniquely African American spin on various cliches and gives us characters who, despite the genre trappings of the film, have a certain amount of depth and emotional complexity.
The performances are pretty darn good across the board from the predominantly new-to-me cast. Michael B. Jordan takes the honors with his two similar, but very different twin brothers determined to save and support each other in an impossible situation. I can see him garnering an Oscar nomination this next year if the film remains remembered at year’s end and the Academy will get over its distaste for the horror genre. I was particularly taken by Li Jun Li’s Chinese wife who makes her minority in a minority community very well and ends up showing spectacular courage when she feels her family threatened. Miles Caton, a teenager in his film debut, holds things together impressively well given his lack of experience.
I can’t rate Sinners higher because, at the end of the day, it ends up being a vampire movie like a couple of other dozen vampire movies I’ve seen over the years and despite the original touches and musical flourishes, it never really breaks out of being a genre piece. It is, however, entertaining and worth a look. Don’t turn it off as the end credits start. There’s a post credits scene that’s a must.
Fried catfish. Guitar to head. Gratuitous tobacco spitting. Burning down the house. Pillar of fire. Truck full of Choctaw. Mojo bag. Cotton picking. Stakes to chest. Bullets to thighs. Gratuitous grenade explosion.
Originally from Seattle Washington, land of mist, coffee and flying salmon, Mrs. Norman Maine sprang to life, full grown like Athena, from Andy’s head during a difficult period of life shortly after his relocation to Alabama.
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