Tom Salinsky

This is clearly the film of the summer which is tearing through the box office faster and more ferociously than a gang of redneck vampires through a juke joint. I saw it and loved it, but I was also careful to learn as little about it as possible in order that it could give up its secrets as it saw fit. I’ve since seen the spoilerific trailers, and I’d urge anyone reading this who hasn’t seen Sinners to avoid them too, stop reading and go and see Sinners, because it’s terrific.

This is the second of two legends-of-acting-playing-two-roles movies out this month, but here it feels like it makes rather more sense than de Niro showing he can do hat-on and hat-off acting in the same film. Smoke and Stack are two different sides of the same coin, plus – who else you gonna get to go toe-to-toe with Michael B Jordan if not Michael B Jordan? The effects work is exemplary, although I wasn’t so knocked out by the cigarette switch in the opening, but the climactic fight is absolutely flawless, and in the dialogue scenes, I simply forget they were both the same actor after a while.

The rest of the cast is top notch too, from seasoned campaigners like Delroy Lindo, to up-and-comers like Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell and Wunmi Mosaku, to complete noobs like the revelatory Miles Canton.

About the only thing which anyone seems to complain about is the pacing, but everyone has a different niggle, so this is evidently a matter of taste more than anything else. For what it’s worth, here’s my take. The opening narration is delicious, and the opening in-media-res-wait-one-day-earlier while shopworn works well to promise the scares that are coming. I adored the material surrounding the brothers putting their venue together and didn’t feel for a minute that I was being made to wait too long for the gore fest, but the intro to Jack O’Connell felt misplaced. I gather this was originally planned to open the film, but director Ryan Coogler felt the audience would be waiting for him to reappear and not be paying attention. He might be right, but the new position for this short sequence feels arbitrary and clunky. Compare that to the elegant way in which the bravura and astonishingly bold music-through-time-lifts-the-roof sequence gives way to the arrival of the bloodsucking trio. Here everything feels purposeful, carefully weighted and hugely effective.

As reality dawns on our gang and they break up the party, they’re made to confront the consequences of their choices, and this again is beautifully paced, but this movie which so luxuriated in its set-ups rushes its pay-offs ever-so-slightly with the climactic battle in the eaves of the bar feeling almost perfunctory. Do stay for the closing credits though if you want to know how the story really ends.

To be clear, these are minor quibbles, with what overall is a hugely exciting, deeply involving, transcendently musical, incredibly confident piece of filmmaking, packing luminous performances, suitably gory effects, razor sharp editing and gorgeous cinematography. What really makes it work though is how the themes of good, evil, temptation, history, hatred, trust, religion, sex, money and death are woven through the rich characters to create a deeply layered, profoundly moving and intricately constructed story. Not bad for a vampire flick by a Marvel director.