DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Our film critic, Justin Chang, says the new supernatural thriller “Sinners” is one of the more interesting and audacious movies to emerge from a major studio so far this year. It’s the latest collaboration between director Ryan Coogler and actor Michael B. Jordan, who worked together previously in “Fruitvale Station,” “Black Panther” and “Creed.” “Sinners” also features Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo and Jack O’Connell and opens in theaters today. Here is Justin’s review.
JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: You can be a fan of “Creed” and “Black Panther” – I certainly am – and still feel a sense of relief that the director, Ryan Coogler, has left franchise filmmaking behind, at least for now. With those earlier movies, Coogler brought a distinctly personal touch to familiar genre material. His latest effort, “Sinners,” is a genre movie, too, with some pulpy narrative beats you’ll recognize. But it’s also his first original script in ages, and it feels wicked and sexy and darkly entrancing in ways that he hasn’t been able to fully embrace until now.
“Sinners” is set in 1930s Mississippi, and it’s awash in gorgeous music, turbulent romance, Pan-African spiritualism, and by the end, buckets of blood. It’s an awful lot of movie, and it makes most of the year’s other studio releases so far look anemic by comparison. “Sinners” also finds Coogler reuniting with Michael B. Jordan, whom he’s worked with consistently since their 2013 drama, “Fruitvale Station.” They double down on their collaboration here – quite literally. Jordan plays twin brothers, named Smoke and Stack, who are notorious fixtures of Chicago’s criminal underworld. It’s 1932, and they’ve just returned to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. As one of them wryly suggests, the North isn’t all that much less racist than the South. Smoke and Stack plan to open a juke joint, where other Black men and women can drink, dance and gamble the night away.
Coogler spends roughly the first half of the film fleshing out this world and its characters and showing us the tremendous group effort it takes to launch a business. Miles Caton is a standout as the twins’ cousin, Sammie, a gifted blues musician who’s recruited to perform. He’s thrown together with Delta Slim, a harmonica and piano virtuoso, played by a delightfully irascible Delroy Lindo. And Wunmi Mosaku is wonderful as Annie, a local medicine woman whom Smoke loved but abandoned years earlier. After some verbal sparring and reconciliatory sex, she agrees to cook for the grand opening.
“Sinners” is so atmospheric, richly textured and gorgeous to watch – see it in IMAX if you can – that it’s almost a disappointment when it veers into supernatural territory. But if the horror beats prove a touch derivative, Coogler builds suspense with shivery assurance, and he waits until just the right moment – the juke joint’s grand opening – for all hell to break loose. In this scene, Annie realizes that the bouncer, played by Omar Benson Miller, is acting strangely. He’s standing right outside the door and won’t enter unless someone invites him in. She recognizes this as a classic tenet of vampire lore.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SINNERS”)
OMAR BENSON MILLER: (As Cornbread) What y’all doing? Just step aside and let me on in now.
WUNMI MOSAKU: (As Annie) Why you need him to do that? You big and strong enough to push past us.
MILLER: (As Cornbread) Well, that wouldn’t be too polite now, would it, Miss Annie? I don’t know why I’m talking to you anyway. Smoke.
MOSAKU: (As Annie) Don’t talk to him. You’re talking to me right now. Why you can’t just walk your big ass up in here without an invite, huh? Go ahead. Admit to it.
MILLER: (As Cornbread) Admit to what?
MOSAKU: (As Annie) That you dead.
MILLER: (As Cornbread, laughing) Smoke, you listening to this? Now we out here playing games, telling ghost stories in place of doing what we ought to do.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) And what is it we’re supposed to be doing?
MILLER: (As Cornbread) Being kind to one another and being polite.
CHANG: Coogler is clearly paying homage here to the legendary horror filmmaker George Romero, not only in his exuberant B-movie splatter, but also in the way he gives the action a sharp, sociopolitical edge. Even before the carnage begins, the director is clearly fascinated by the racial dynamics of the period. Li Jun Li and Yao play a couple who own a grocery store, one of many such Chinese-run businesses that served Black communities in the segregated South. Hailee Steinfeld turns up as Stack’s former flame, and although sparks soon reignite, the movie harbors zero sentimental illusions about how their ill-fated interracial romance will play out.
The entire film can be read as a grimly fantastical parable of Black survival. At one point, someone wonders if vampirism might actually be preferable to white supremacy. It’s not a facetious question, and Smoke and Stack themselves might disagree on the answer. They’re fairly similar as twins go, but Michael B. Jordan subtly captures their crucial difference in temperament and worldview. Stack is the gentler, more trusting one, while Smoke is far warier and more guarded. How they both choose to confront evil will change and define them forever.
I’ve forgotten to mention that on top of all that, “Sinners” is practically a full-blown musical, with a hypnotic, blues-heavy score by Ludwig Goransson and a blunt yet potent message about the spiritual power of song. Early on in the juke joint, the characters give themselves over to the ecstasy of Sammie’s music. And Coogler follows suit with an imaginative, dreamlike sequence that bridges eras and continents, placing the West African dancers of the ancient past on a continuum with the hip-hop artists of the future. Music, Coogler reminds us, can collapse boundaries between time and space – so, it turns out, can some movies.
BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed “Sinners,” the new thriller starring Michael B. Jordan.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG GORANSSON SONG, “WHY YOU HERE / BEFORE THE SUN WENT DOWN”)
BIANCULLI: On Monday’s show, actor Noah Wyle of the popular TV series “The Pitt” about drama and chaos in a Pittsburgh hospital emergency room. The show has earned a following among ER doctors for the accuracy of its portrayals of emergency medicine. Wyle plays a veteran doctor plagued by PTSD from the early days of COVID. I hope you can join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG GORANSSON SONG, “WHY YOU HERE / BEFORE THE SUN WENT DOWN”)
BIANCULLI: To keep up with what’s on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram – @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR’s executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez (ph). Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I’m David Bianculli.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG GORANSSON SONG, “WHY YOU HERE / BEFORE THE SUN WENT DOWN”)
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