In Sinners, women get a double eye-dose of Michael B. Jordan, writer/director Ryan Coogler flexes his muscles in audacious ways, and white bloodsuckers feast on the flesh of Black people. My girlfriend also learned, halfway through this ambitious, energetic, and original piece of work, that I wasn’t joking when I said Sinners was a vampire movie.
Sinners is a spectacle where Coogler takes his cool, collected time to lay the groundwork for what will inevitably become a music-infused bloodbath. The director behind Black Panther, Creed, and Fruitvale Station (all of which star Jordan, by the way) lets loose with this oft-riveting tale that has twins, both former soldiers and patsies to Al Capone, fleeing to their Southern hometown with truckloads of stolen sin water and enough cash to buy and convert an old mill into a rollicking club for townsfolk of a certain color, despite the Klan lurking nearby. Sinners veers left and right, meandering almost chaotically and yet with realized purpose, introducing us to Coogler’s cast of cobbled-together yet delightfully radiant characters, ranging from the sultry Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) to alcoholic Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who sobers up quickly when artery chunks hit the fan.
But always present is Jordan (and other Jordan), who delivers two electric performances as Smoke and Stack. Brothers, inseparable but not indistinguishable, they are well written and perfectly executed; Jordan is at the top of his game here.
And Coogler too seems to be operating at another level, his filmmaking talent unleashed with a big-budgeted film not beholden to convention or franchise. There always seems to be a dozen things happening in parallel at any given moment in Sinners, a frenetic symphony of concerted chaos. The sound mixing is explosively good yet almost overwhelming; Coogler doesn’t shy away from layering tracks upon one another, whispers compounding whispers—god only knows what I missed.
Despite all its triumphs, something holds me back from blanketing Sinners with blood love. Maybe I’ll see what others see on repeat viewing, but while watching this not-quite-normal production I couldn’t shake the feeling that while Coogler is directing his heart out, there are overly simplistic things at play that stand in contrast to the complexities reaching for you from the shadows. The vampire stuff—introduced midway through in a way that hearkens back to From Dusk til Dawn—is chilling (Jack O’Connell is downright frightening) and yet oddly straightforward to the point of disappointing, not in the delivery of it all but in the structure of how the story unfolds. I just expected more—more onscreen bloodshed, sure, but more time with the living figuring out how to stay alive. I didn’t realize I was watching the climax until it was almost over; a few extra scenes, even at the expense of a longer runtime, thrown into the middle would have helped tremendously. And while the second-climax symbolically works, it all feels rushed and tacked on from a narrative perspective. Further, while Sinners is simmering with thematic undertones tied to race and the Black experience, simple old me wonders if anything actually new is said here that hasn’t been laid bare in other movies, including ones by Coogler.
And yet… Sinners is boldly and confidently told in a way few films are. The weird-as-hell Blues number that transcends time and space (and that ultimately beckons the vampires) is mesmerizing and fills your soul with crackling lightning (an Irish jig from the vampires also is spellbinding). Sinners is sharply written with strong, defined characters, elevated by an ensemble cast that steps up in all ways possible. Sinners is an achievement.
I just wish I had loved it more. And that my girlfriend, going in, had trusted me. Her stunned shock when discovering the truth, however, made the experience wholly worthwhile.
Review by Erik Samdahl.