The latest Ryan Coogler movie Sinners is an off-the-charts invigorating experience.DIANE DE BEER speaks her mind:

Currently showing at Ster-Kinekor

Michael B Jordan and Miles Canton face their fears in Sinners

SINNERS

DIRECTOR: Ryan Coogler

CAST: Michael B Jordan, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, Hailee Steinfeld, Lu Jun Li, Yao, Omar Benson Miller

If you are familiar with the movies Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, you will also know the director as well as the star of Sinners. Apart from the fact that Coogler knows how to go big, work with issues and pick a star cast, everything else will be new.

Horror and vampires aren’t exactly my favourite genres, in fact, I avoid them, but here Coogler’s name was just too much of a draw. That and the fact that much of what he seemed to be aiming at in this film comes across like the themes in one of my favourite movies, Get Out.

Too many people like steering clear of issue-driven movies, but in our world where the divide is still so big in so many areas, as an older white film fanatic, I want to hear what the dynamic young black voices have to say; which stories they want to tell and also, how do they get those stories across.

That was what I was looking forward to in this one. The cast is huge and the actors are quite something. Coogler has worked with Jordan in most of his films and here he literally doubles up as the twin brothers Smoke and Stack (yip, that’s what they’re called). They’re equally dandily dressed, but their clothes, although similar, have distinctive features, and the one’s behaviour is more out there than the other’s. Fortunately, technology can pretty much perfectly deliver anything directors want these days.

Michael B Jordan and his friends stand together.

The rest of the cast are as cleverly picked and especially the two women, a stunningly statuesque Mosaku and the smouldering Steinfield, will knock your socks off with their performances. And if you don’t know the names, you will recognize them and after this movie, you will certainly also remember the names.

But everyone in the film impresses. The look and the style will grip you from start to finish and then you can add the music, which for me truly dominated in the best sense of the word. It is quite simply brilliant – both from the black brethren as well as the white trash.

The first are seriously into the blues and the latter have a more gentle, contained country folk sound. You will be rocking in your chair and the cast are seemingly given free rein to make those moves rhythmically magical. It’s one party you don’t want to miss.

The first half of the film is pretty much about the two brothers returning from Chicago where they have collected rolls and rolls of cash and boxes of Irish beer (courtesy Al Capone circa 1930) and returning to the Mississippi Delta (which already spells trouble), where they establish a juke joint in a rundown mill belonging to a supremacist landlord, who is only interested in the lucre and not the colour of their skin when he rents them the place … or so he says.

Then the hard labour begins as everybody gets ready to get the place rocking. As the night hovers on the horizon, when the sun sets the trouble begins.

Michael B Jordan and director Ryan Coogler discussing the scene about to be shot.

This is where it became a bit too much, as the seriously partying crowd are stopped in their tracks by a family of vampires who threaten to deliver them all into a permanent state of wandering.

And yet, those are all just the package in which this film is wrapped. What Coogler is really playing with is the grand divide which has been ongoing for millennia. Every time I questioned the rage and the explosive catastrophe that turns a festive night into a slaughter madness, I was reminded of the damage inflicted by their relentless savage treatment.

As always, critics differ, but here the critical thinking swings viciously from one end of the spectrum to the other – and I found myself on both sides in certain instances.

The originality was the standout feature for me. The epic extremes the director decided to launch when he truly wanted to make his point felt like the result of dealing with an unexplained hatred which has been raging for ages. And if you had to be on the receiving end of such constant humiliation, hardship and absence of humanity which have run through generations of your brothers and sisters, perhaps the results have to be of volcanic proportions.

I was wondering how many of especially the older generation would stomach this particular version but, for me, it is the weight of the story, the magnificence of the performances of especially the two female leads, the sublime singing, musicmaking and acting  by the young Miles Canton, the doubling up of the Jordan performances, or just to witness the making of the movie in this single instance, and the list goes on.

It didn’t all work for me, but as usual Coogan is epic in his filmmaking approach. Brace yourself, participate in the ride. Already the staff at Brooklyn Ster-Kinekor is saying it has been their busiest show yet. And techy podcaster Kara Swisher is celebrating the fact that Coogan negotiated good money on worldwide ticket sales as well as owning the intellectual property after a few years, something almost unheard of in Hollywood. Don’t miss the changing of the guard. It’s going to be one helluva wave – and perhaps just