The reports of Ryan Coogler’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Well, demise may not be the right word for a filmmaker whose last two movies — Marvel ventures Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — grossed more than $2 billion combined and garnered 12 Oscar nominations (four wins). But seeing someone who was billed as “the next Steven Spielberg” following his meteoric rise spend nearly a decade milling about in the notoriously director-unfriendly MCU was a bit disappointing.
This isn’t just some film-snob bellyaching either. Take it directly from the man himself, who in a recent interview with Deadline said he "had to reckon with the fact that the audience doesn’t truly know me” following his long foray into franchise filmmaking.
Well, mission accomplished. Sinners, Coogler’s latest, is a rip-roaring, crowd-pleasing genre mashup with deep soul that’s brimming with the filmmaker’s various influences. In what is becoming an increasingly hostile Hollywood landscape for directors hoping to create original mid- and large-budget films for adults, Sinners combines the sort of audience-engaging beats you’d expect from a Tom Cruise blockbuster with ambitious scope, bold storytelling choices and grindhouse griminess. In simpler terms, it’s like if Christopher Nolan had made From Dusk Till Dawn. That comparison might be giving away the game a bit for anyone who hasn’t seen the trailers, but don’t worry — the crime-movie-slash-vampire-freakout has plenty more surprises up its sleeve.
Continuing his 12-year collaboration with Coogler, Michael B. Jordan stars as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack, who — upon their return to Mississippi from a brief stint in the Chicago mob underworld — have decided to throw a grand party for the opening of their new juke joint. The twins’ little cousin Sammie (former H.E.R. backup singer Miles Caton in his film debut) is caught between his stifling preacher father and the twins’ alluring world; he just wants to play the blues, and Smoke and Stack offer him a spot onstage during the juke joint’s opening-night throwdown.
Things are complicated by the presence of the duo’s respective exes — Wunmi Mosaku as Annie and Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, who both light up the screen. Delroy Lindo steals every scene he’s in as blues drunkard Delta Slim, Jack O’Connell menaces as the leader of a group of folk-playing vampires, and Babylon’s Li Jun Li stands out as local shop owner Grace Chow. It’s the type of film in which every member of the ensemble gets a moment to metaphorically, and many times literally, sing.
As you can deduce from the various character descriptors and plot mechanics, music is a major through line in Sinners. Two-time Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson provides a genre- and timeline-collapsing score that encompasses African American music of the past, present and future. This music fusion leads to one of two bold sequences in the film, and gets to the heart of what Coogler wants to say beyond the blood-and-sex genre tropes.
Coogler has a true passion for the different types of film stock and their various uses, and that passion is on display throughout the movie. Sinners was shot on 65 mm film using a combination of IMAX and Ultra Panavision cameras; it also features several aspect-ratio changes during its two-plus-hour runtime. In an environment where Oppenheimer’s use of 70 mm IMAX cameras caused theatergoers to rush to the cineplex in droves, hopefully Sinners can find a similar success, giving Coogler the ability to make more original films.
That might not be in the cards no matter how successful Sinners is, at least in the immediate future. Denzel Washington says Coogler is writing a part for him in the unconfirmed Black Panther 3, while Sinners itself is ripe for cinematic universe exploration.
But after seeing what Coogler is capable of when given a blank check and limited studio interference, and seeing all the pieces of his career come together in one fell swoop — the urgency of Fruitvale Station, the filmmaking chops of Creed, the crowd-pleasing blockbuster scope of the Black Panther films — it would feel like a waste to see him dive back into franchise-land. Sinners is what it looks like when studios give auteurs the runway to make something vital.
