SINNERS is a MOVIE Movie
On Ryan Coogler's thrilling new southern vampire film.
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I’m not going to belabor my point, here: Sinners is capital ‘g’, capital ‘m’ Good Movie. If you’ve been dying for some electricity in the movie theater, this is it: sexy, thrilling, moving, filled with real ideas. You’ll be abuzz afterwards. Please, treat yourself to a good time.
Ok, onto the belaboring.
Ryan Coogler has never missed.
His 2013 Fruitvale Station was a gripping true-story that had something to say. That something was already included in the source material, so other than the choice to fictionalize these specific true events, it wasn’t immediately obvious how well this talented director could stage his own ideas and messages. His next movies all gave room to expect light fare, farces, simple pleasures: a boxing movie tangential to the Rocky franchise; a Marvel movie; a sequel to a Marvel movie; and now a southern folk vampire romp. With each movie, Coogler has taught us to expect the unexpected, and to expect something deeper than fanfare. Creed reminded us what sports movies can be (powerful, moving, human, electrifying). Black Panther was a genuine cultural revelation that Marvel, or any other movie studio, has never paralleled. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a movie that lost its heart, and much more, when its lead, the illustrious Chadwick Boseman died from an undisclosed battle with colon cancer, after Coogler had been writing and pre-producing the film for over a year. The resulting film was a mish-mash of ideas, attempting to produce something that would check all the boxes that Marvel movies need to check. It is not entirely successful, but it packs an unbelievable and affecting emotional punch that Boseman’s death deserved.
Sinners was Coogler’s first non-franchise script since his premiere feature. He put it, and his filmmaking team, together quickly after both having something to say, and realizing that he won’t have this kind of Hollywood clout forever, and that he, and his team, don’t have their whole lives to work together. They need to act now. Studios entered a bidding war to get the rights to make it, and Warner Brothers inked the best deal. All we knew was that it was a Coogler movie, it had vampires in it, and it had Coogler’s career-long sidekick attached to star.
Michael B. Jordan’s star has been rising just as fast as Coogler’s has, and not just because he’s been working with an A+ list director. Jordan is an outright movie-star, who we have known since he was 15 years old in 2002’s The Wire. He grew up fast, portraying a real life victim of police shooting Oscar Grant in Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, he played two major lead parts in 2015’s massive hit Creed and its massive failure Fantastic Four. He played a nuanced and memorable villain in Black Panther, he lead other action movies, he directed and starred in Creed III, and he’s directing and starring in an upcoming adaptation of The Thomas Crowne Affair. He is him.
The pair combine again in Sinners, with Jordan playing identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack, war veterans from the Mississippi Delta who return home after a stint running with mafia figures in Chicago. They return to open a juke joint, a spot where they, and their community, can find peace and joy in music, beer, fried catfish, and each other, for at least one night a week, even if no one has any money and their country continues to write laws to diminish, belittle, and kill them.
With a truckload of liquor, and pocketfuls of cash, Smoke and Stack make a run of it, bringing their cousin Sammie, an aspiring and already talented musician, into their fold. The team recruits others from their past lives, buy a property, string up some lights, and grandly open their dream. The trouble lies in the others that want their dream, too.
In every way that a film can succeed, Sinners provides: the ensemble cast is picture perfect; the music, from current “world’s most interesting composer” Ludwig Göransson, is essential and transporting; the visuals, captured on massive IMAX cameras b cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, are big and beautiful; the look and feel, provided by the legendary production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter (who have both been a critical part of Coogler’s filmmaking team since forever). There is action, there is drama, there is comedy, there are authentic music moments, and there is genuinely erotic sex.
At the center of all of this effective creativity is Coogler’s script, a delicately woven tapestry of ideas, and each idea is masked in genre filmmaking trademarks. I gave myself 30 seconds to come up with answers to “what is this movie about”. I got:
The History of American Music
The Blues
Commerce
Capitalism
Race
Sex
Selling out
Generational divides
Seduction
Copying art
Corruption
Light and Dark
All-time talent
Betting on yourself
Coming home
Community
Creativity
Choosing how to live
I promise that’s only half of the blood in this film’s body.
Coogler’s best talent has always been his writing, and his ability to create platforms for showcasing humanity, love, morality, evil, and everything else that makes us who we are. He stages excellence so well, and he creates heroes and myths with precision and force. He points out our worst flaws, our worst histories, and our best qualities, and our best tools for growth.
He does all of this in Sinners without the fatal flaw of pointing a finger squarely at race; this is a story about people, about Americans. Of course race plays a role, because these are people, and these are Americans, and this is the American south in the 1930’s, but this isn’t “white people are evil, black people are good, we should all just get along” slop. This isn’t fucking Green Book. This is a story well-told, by an author who believes in the capabilities and interests and desires of the audience.
The movie is also just completely fun, and scary, and sad, and engaging. The theater lobby after my showing had more energy in it than after any movie I’ve seen in years. The conversations I heard walking back to my car were electric.
This is a MOVIE movie. It doesn’t need to be anything else than that.
Industry Side Note
Some people are trying to make this movie, particularly its financial success, more important than this movie being fun. There have been a couple of odd, gross, obviously planted stories in Vulture and The New York Times about the deal that Ryan Coogler signed with Warner Brothers, particularly the detail that, in 25 years, ownership of this movie will revert entirely back to Coogler himself. “Anonymous studio executives” are saying this could be “the end of the studio system”, while also saying that this movie, which is making large sums of money as I type this, definitely won’t be a “financial success” that the industry “needs” it to be.
Honestly, the meta conversations about this movie and its industry have been the most frustrating and annoying I have ever heard in this context, and I typically love thinking about these contexts. Though let me be clear: no one should give a shit if studios make a profit while funding art. That’s not the point of anything valuable. These executives, and industry insiders, and whoever the fuck, are being obviously, overtly prejudiced and jealous, and they are acting like children, and I encourage you to not read into any of this drivel. Or, if you want to hear someone speak great truth to these idiotic forms of “conventional industry wisdom”, listen to Franklin Leonard on this week’s episode of The Town.
Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you go and see this fine film. I hope you go and see any of the seemingly fine films coming our way this summer. Movie theaters are a great place, a great source of local community. We shouldn’t spend all of our time reading and listening and watching things privately. Go share an experience with someone!
I’ll see you out there.
B