Director: Ryan Coogler
Writer: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. JordanMiles CatonSaul Williams
Vampire movies often struggle to be inventive. The formulas and mythologies of the subgenre are tried and tested, repeated and reworded: Stinging holy water, foul garlic, burning sunrises, and firm wooden stakes through the heart are the primary tools wielded against the undead. Oftentimes, the biggest change from story to story is merely the setting, whether it’s a far flung Eastern-European country, an American urban locale, or a stifling desert. Knowing those limitations, I have to give “Sinners,” a sweaty, gory Southern Gothic horror musical, some credit. It’s a messy picture that throws the kitchen sink at the genre and, yet, somehow, often misses.
In Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” Michael B. Jordan plays Smoke and Stack, bootlegging brothers and former soldiers who left home long ago to fight in World War I before settling in Chicago to work for Capone’s outfit. They’re returning to the Mississippi Delta with rolls of cash and cases of Irish beer to open a juke joint in a disused sawmill bought off a racist white man, and they hope their little cousin Sammie (Miles Caton, a former backup singer for H.E.R. who mostly holds his own) will help them out. Despite their best plans, however, they’re unable to create a safe space that’ll protect attendees from the Jim Crow racism present in 1932. A bloodthirsty company will visit them before their lone day of business is out, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Sinners” is a Coogler movie through and through, attempting much of what the writer/director tried to accomplish with “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The director reaches for epic scope when intimacy would do just fine, mourns broken Black lineages, and makes bare the stains of American racism. It also returns Jordan to the fold in a dual performance that attempts to be smoldering and desirable, imposing and heroic. It’s a shame to see Coogler’s ambitious designs ultimately conform to genre conventions, causing the intended awe to happen only in flashes.
The cast, a diverse assortment of major talents that takes a while to assemble, illustrates the film’s broad scope. “Sinners” briefly opens with a scarred and disheveled Sammie, brandishing the severed neck of his guitar, arriving back at his father’s white church, desperately searching for salvation. The film then flashes back a full day, picking up with Smoke and Stack’s arrival in town. We then follow their hiring of local talent: the alcoholic bluesman Delta Slim (a wonderfully slippery Delroy Lindo) for entertainment, a Hoodoo conjurer named Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to cook food, Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) to mind the bar, and Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) to guard the door. Former flames, like Stack’s past lover Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who many mistake for white, also arrive. As does Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a local girl with whom Sammie is smitten. The accumulation of characters and backstories takes long enough that we don’t arrive at the juke joint until about an hour into the film.
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