The marketing campaign for Sinners centered around the appeal of director Ryan Coogler, a talented filmmaker. Coogler’s debut feature, Fruitvale Station, was a thoughtful biopic of the late Oscar Grant III, who was killed by California police on New Year’s Day 2009; it was the type of earnest, low-budget production that signified the director’s ability to innovate. While Coogler was able to make the best Rocky sequel in over three decades with Creed, his obligations to the Marvel Cinematic Universe meant that the better half of his 30s were spent within the confines of Disney’s rules. A Black Panther film may have helped raise Coogler’s profile, but it also boxed in the types of stories he could tell when forced to shoehorn connections to The Avengers films.
Sinners has a lot in common with the work of Stephen King, John Carpenter, and H.P. Lovecraft, but only in the broadest sense; Coogler’s film is set within the sweaty, bloody fields of Mississippi in the 1930s, and doesn’t shy away from the generational trauma in a black-led historical fable. Michael B. Jordan, who has starred in all five of Coogler’s films, has the dual roles of the twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who’ve returned to their hometown after a stint in Chicago. The brothers have attracted enemies based on a feud with Italian and Irish mobsters, and the financial decision to relocate to a rural community seems illogical; this is because their intention is to build a new institution on the same ground where their ancestors were beaten and enslaved. The resurgent Ku Klux Klan is a threat, but Smoke and Stack are placed in greater danger when their gathering of black artists is targeted by a ruthless sect of vampires.
An obvious point of comparison with Sinners is Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, which masked its vampiric twist until after audiences were already hooked by a getaway crime caper. The difference is that Sinners doesn’t prolong any suspense about its genre, as the enigmatic band of bloodsucking demons led by Irishman Remmick (Jack O’Connell) are revealed within the opening moments. The first half of Sinners is too detail-oriented to feel like filler, but it also lacks kineticism; as Smoke and Stack are introduced to the batch of characters that’re invariably forced to fend off against the vampires, Sinners could be mistaken for a straightforward period drama about the challenges faced by black-owned businesses when wealth is only achievable through inheritance. Although there are a few flirtations with existentialism Americana in the vein of Terrence Malick, Sinners is oddly conventional in the build-up to the showdown.
Sinners is saved from its narrative stagnation by proxy of Coogler’s specificity in characterization; even with the assumption that a significant portion of the cast will be brutally dispatched in by daylight, there’s reason enough to be invested in each characters’ relationship with the prospect of cultural destiny. The modest ambition that Stack and Smoke have is to own their own club, which could theoretically offer a haven to black artists and kickstart an independent economy.
Jordan’s talents as an actor lie in his ability to capture the righteous, yet vulnerable anger of a spurned child desperate to prove something; his best performance is still as Wallace in the first season of The Wire, in one of greatest feats of child acting in history. The stratification of the storyline in Sinners has made it easy to differentiate between his two characters, but in both cases, he’s far more convincing as a badass action hero than a world-weary entrepreneur. Although Coogler may have been more interested in Jordan’s ability to entice an audience with his charisma, the flatness of the performances are only exacerbated upon comparison to the supporting ensemble. The underrated character actor Delroy Lindo is a standout as the veteran musician Delta Slim, whose caution about any prosperous arrangement is subtly heartbreaking. Also compelling in the role of the love interest Mary is Hailee Steinfeld, who’s given the first opportunity to delve into her mixed-race heritage.
The film’s emotional burden is placed on the shoulders of young actor Miles Canton, whose character Sammie Moore is an aspiring musician warned about the subjugation of his talents. Sinners’ thematic richness is derived from Coogler’s depiction of music as a magnetic gateway to both culture and history; Sammie may have the power to transcend his circumstance as a result of his talents, but those closest to him fear the burden of treating him as a prophet.
Sammie’s arc is diminished by the extended final battle, in which Coogler’s passion in the gory action of The Thing or Prince of Darkness is on display. It’s clever to diminish his role amidst the spectacle, as Coogler’s keen to note the difference between folklore and history. Nonetheless, the result is an extended finale with one too many capstones.
Nonetheless, Sinners is only frustrating because it's so ambitious, and the narrative hiccups don’t devalue the scale of Coogler’s vision. Sinners is often indulgent and occasionally at odds with itself, but it's impressive that perfection was not Coogler’s singular aspiration. The rough edges of Sinners are often why it’s compelling; when the material is this rich, messiness isn’t a detriment.