Music may traditionally soothe the savage beast, but in Sinners, it rouses the world’s devilish monsters to emerge from the darkness, sing a menacing song or two, and feast on the living.
Pairing director Ryan Coogler with his Black Panther and Creed leading man Michael B. Jordan, this original period-piece nightmare, in theaters April 18, has style and swagger to burn, as well as a couple of tantalizing ideas buried beneath its gory surface. Unfortunately, it never coherently articulates (or draws connections between its) various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.
In Clarksdale, Mississippi circa 1932, “Preacher Boy” Sammie (Miles Caton) shows up at his pastor father’s church covered in crimson, his face boasting fresh slash marks and his hand clutching the neck of what was once his prized steel guitar. Sammie’s dad halts his service to command the boy to “leave those sinning ways!”, but letting go of his profane urges is almost as difficult as dropping his instrument.
Sinners subsequently flashes back a day to Sammie returning home from a night of picking cotton in the fields. Staring at the horizon from the doorway of the house he shares with multiple siblings, he appears to be a good and dutiful kid with big plans—elsewhere, perhaps—for his future.
Sammie is the soul of Sinners, if not its protagonist—of which the film has two, both played by Jordan. Twins Smoke and Stack are well-dressed gangsters who, following military service and seven years spent making a (literal and figurative) killing in Chicago, have come back to Mississippi with dreams of starting their own juke joint. To accomplish this, they purchase a mill and its surrounding land from a white local named Hogwood (David Maldonado), who claims that the KKK no longer exists but whose condescending and malicious smile suggests otherwise.
Once the deal is done (aided by cash and a faint threat of violence), the siblings head to the markets owned by Chinese immigrant couple Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li), whom they hire to provide food, supplies, and a sign for their establishment, whose grand opening is that evening.
Smoke and Stack are delineated by the color of their attire and Stack’s single gold tooth, yet aside from those superficial differences, they’re mostly the same, and Sinners suffers for it. Because Smoke and Stack are so alike, Jordan is basically giving the same performance twice, thereby calling into question the necessity of the film’s central CGI-enabled gimmick.
Still, the actor’s magnetism is more than enough to shoulder the weight of the material. His twins begin preparing for their big night by enlisting Sammie to play some of his authentic down-and-dirty blues tunes and, also, to share the stage with Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), a harmonica maestro willing to accept the duo’s offer of a hefty payday and limitless ice-cold Irish beer.
Sinners takes its sweet time on Smoke and Stack’s daylong errands, which additionally involve Stack’s run-in with jilted paramour Mary (Hailee Steinfeld, looking perpetually out of place), who’s furious over being callously dropped by her beau, and Smoke’s reunion with Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a Bayou medicine woman whom he loves and whose backyard boasts a mysterious and meaningful grave.
Coogler establishes his scenario patiently, steeping the proceedings in an inviting ’30s atmosphere. Alas, very little of note takes place during the early going, and the film’s cursory address of the era’s racial dynamics leaves the story feeling thin and frustratingly slow to its forthcoming mayhem.
That arrives courtesy of Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an enigmatic stranger who knocks on the door of a KKK couple seeking shelter from the sun that’s scorching his skin. Remmick is a creature of the night and he’s destined to lead the siege on Smoke and Stack’s club.
However, before that can commence, Sinners dawdles on several sultry threads (including Sammie’s hot-to-trot fondness for Jayme Lawson’s married singer Pearline), as well as a showstopping performance in which Sammie’s blues ditty melds with Black past and present, from African tribal drummers to futuristic electric guitar gods. Shot in a long, serpentine single take, Coogler makes literal the opening narration’s contention that some music is so special that it has the power to pierce the veil separating then and now, the living and the dead. In short order, the song attracts the attention of Remmick and his new acolytes, who croon their own Irish melodies once they’re denied the opportunity to join in the juke club fun.
While Remmick is a white antagonist who’s tempted by, and wants to co-opt, Black music, Sinners doesn’t fully develop that theme, and an even riper notion—that vampirism might grant Blacks the equality and fraternity they’re denied by 1930s American society—is likewise introduced and then abandoned.
Coogler wants to say and do a lot, and his film is ultimately hampered by it, and that extends to his main event. Smoke and Stack’s situation more than slightly recalls From Dusk till Dawn, and though Coogler indulges in standard neck-chomping and arterial sprays, his slaughterhouse finale is full of unbelievable decisions, convenient solutions (thank goodness Annie is a certified vampire expert!), and rigged-game incidents. Whether it’s baddies opting not to attack despite having the overwhelming advantage (and sometimes running away for no reason), or heroes magically felling adversaries via shortcut plotting, Smoke and Stack’s last stand against the unholy is dispiritingly sloppy.
As befitting a film that drags its feet getting to the good stuff and then can’t totally deliver, Sinners doesn’t know how to wrap things up, indulging in a prolonged 1992 coda that restates its belief in music’s supremacy while raising questions it doesn’t want to answer.
In any decade’s fashion, Jordan lights up the screen, and Coogler—regardless of the action’s sluggishness—crafts a few indelible moments, such as a scene that cuts between a singer stomping her feet during a barnstormer performance and multiple men kicking a guy on the ground, or a smoldering body transforming into an angry tornado of flames. Neither artist, however, quite figures out how to make their latest collaboration’s elements harmonize—leaving it a clumsy, if occasionally alluring, bit of butchery.
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