April 20, 2025
In 1932, Sammie (Miles Caton), nicknamed "Preacher Boy" because his father was the pastor of the local church, joined his older cousins, a pair of twin brothers nicknamed Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan). They had just come back to their Mississipi hometown with a stash of cash they gained after working for gangsters in Chicago. They wanted to open the best juke joint in their area, and Sammie was going to be their guitar-player and singer.
They recruited liquor-loving Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to play piano, Chinese shopkeepers Bo and Grace (Yao and Li Jun Li) for the supplies, and big guy Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) to be their doorman. Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) was the cook. Stack's ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) was still sore for being abandoned. Sammie met a sultry blues singer Pearline (Jaymie Lawson) on whom he had a big crush.
Writer-director Ryan Coogler certainly took his time in telling his story. The entire first hour was spent on building this world of the Moore twins Smoke and Stack, introducing them and all the characters around them, so that we will care about what happens to them in the second half of the film. At first, we needed clues to distinguish the twins -- Smoke wore a blue beret, while Stack wore a red fedora. Later, Jordan made sure we could tell which twin was who.
From the very beginning, we already knew that music was going to play an important role in this movie. The narrator tells us how cultures all over the world all believed that music could have supernatural powers. When Sammie told his pastor father that he was going to play blues music, he was warned how this music could bring him towards danger. Blues music is laden with sensual melancholy as derived from Afro-American work songs and spirituals.
The highlight of the second act was that auditory spectacle of hearing Sammie sing and play guitar in the juke joint. Hearing a preview of Miles Caton's rich singing voice for the first time in the car was already so great. However, his spellbinding performance on that stage on opening night, that was truly breathtaking. You simply need to hear it to believe how this music was able to summon spirits from the future and the past, and the supernatural.
Winmi Mosaku's Annie may not fit in the mold of a typical Michael B. Jordan leading lady, but she was way more woman than any other -- a strong and sultry earth mother. Hailee Steinfeld stood out not because of her light skin color, but likewise for the maturity of the Mary role, so far from how we knew her from "True Grit" (2010) or the "Hawkeye" Disney+ series (2021). Jayme Lawson was a sensually-charged Pearline, especially in her song "Pale Pale Moon."
The third act began abruptly with a sudden appearance of an Irish guy named Remmick (Jack O'Connell) who had escaped from an Indian tribe. From that time on, the film took on a totally different atmosphere of dread and horror, a jarring turnaround from the socio-cultural flavor of the first two acts. These new monsters were deadly, but still retained their original personality before they turned. The mid-credit scene must definitely not be missed. 9/10
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