I couldn’t ignore all the buzz that Sinners was getting. It’s not easy to achieve both 90+ percent in critics and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. So, over to the local movie theater I went and strapped in for two hours of… well, I didn’t know what. I’d seen the fist trailer, which was vague, and nothing else. This is how I prefer to see movies if possible. I want to know as little as I can.
The story takes place in a 1932 Mississippi town – and yes, I was, as always, excited to be able to type out “Mississippi.” Identical twins Smoke and Stack, who used to work for Al Capone in Chicago, have returned home to start a new business venture. They’re going to open a dance hall.
For whatever reason, they’re adamant about starting their dance hall TONIGHT. You’d think maybe they’d spend a month putting the place together. But no, it must be tonight. By the way, it’s never explained why the urgency but maybe Ryan Coogler reads Scriptshadow and knows that the tighter the timeframe, the better.
Smoke and Stack put together their team throughout the day – getting their guitar man, their harmonica man, their door man, their food people, their liquor guys. And, as the sun sets, people start showing up.
Little do they know, just down the road, a vampire has crashed a couple’s home and immediately turns them into vampires as well. The three of them, who now are, also, an Irish folk band, show up at Smoke-Stack’s party and want to join. A little issue, though. They’re white and everyone here is black. So Smoke and Stack tell them to get lost.
Eventually, Smoke’s (or Stack’s) side piece girlfriend ventures out to ask the folk band why they’re still hanging around and she gets bitten. Therefore, when she comes back inside, she lures Stack into a back room and, during hanky-panky time, she bites him. Smoke catches wind of what’s going on and orders everyone but the staff to leave. And now, the games begin.
The folk band vampires immediately turn all of the leaving partygoers into vampires, which means there are a good 200 vampires outside eager to devour the staff. So they wait, and they taunt, and they tempt, and they trick, all in an attempt to lure the rest of the crew out and turn them into vampires. Eventually, it becomes an all-out war and nearly everyone dies.
So, how was it??
Was it as good as everyone’s saying?
Well, you know how I see things at this point. The first thing I’m looking at is not the acting, not the directing, not the visuals or the music. I’m looking at the script. And the script has problems.
I’ve seen these types of scripts before and they have a very significant issue that’s hard to overcome. That issue is that the main event – in this case, the party – is too small to get to right away but too big to get to too late. In other words, you can’t start the party at the beginning of the second act (pages 26-31). You’ll run out of steam before the climax.
However, the later the party starts, the more script you have to cover in the meantime. And what do you do with that time? The first act (pages 1-30) sets everything up. In this case, it sets up the brothers’ return. It sets up the purchase of the party building. It sets up all the characters who are going to be involved.
But, traditionally, when the second act begins, that’s when your characters need to go out on their journey. For example, that’s when Deadpool and Wolverine begin their journey to escape the world they’ve been banished to. In Sinners, the “journey” is the party.
But like I said, you can’t start the party too early. So this leaves this “No Man’s Land” between the end of the first act and the beginning of the party, where Sinners is clearly lost. Coogler’s solution is to extend his setup from 30 pages, to a full 45 pages, and so we get lost in this ENDLESS setup where, quite frankly, we’re bored out of our minds.
Now, in fairness, the reason I don’t think it bothered critics as much, is because they know what’s coming. They know Insane Vampire Party is coming. And when you know something big and flashy and sexy is coming, you’re more willing to suffer through an elongated setup. But there’s no question that this setup section is a disaster. It’s way too long.
Still in need to cover time before the real movie begins, Coogler then gets us to the party, but gives us this sort of “half party” where people are lingering about and chilling and not really into it yet. Again, we’re stuck in Screenplay No Man’s Land here. And it’s giving this movie all sorts of pacing issues.
In fact, the inciting incident, when the vampire folk band shows up at the party, doesn’t happen until 60-70 pages into the script! Which is insane. But, at least now the movie has begun.
So, once the movie truly begins, was it worth the wait? I would say…. Almost. Things get so crazy that there’s definitely entertainment value to be had here. And the music stuff is really good. There’s sort of like this music battle going on between the people inside the building and outside the building. It’s funky, a little bit different. And that was cool to watch.
Also, Coogler was a genius to cast Michael B. Jordan in the brother roles. Because, traditionally, if you had cast a movie star and a character actor in those roles, you wouldn’t make your movie star a brain dead vampire halfway through the film. The movie star wouldn’t go for it. They’d want to be the star, the guy who leads the charge til the very end. But because Jordan is playing two roles, it allowed Coogler to do that, which was cool.
And I was into the final battle. I was curious what was going to happen. Unlike traditional Hollywood movies, you got the sense that nobody was safe and that’s when endings are most exciting. I’m not sure I understood why we continued the movie after the night was over. But, otherwise, I thought the climax was good.
So, it’s a mixed bag, this film. It’s messy. In addition to the early script issues, I don’t really understand what the movie was about. I’m guessing some sort of social commentary was being made here but I didn’t pick up on what that was. I’m sure people will get on their high horses and confidently claim it was about “this” or “that,” but I’m betting every one of them got those theories from a quick post-movie internet search.
In the end, I have to ask the question, “Would I be confident in telling someone it was worth 30 bucks (ticket plus parking) to go out and see this movie?” And the answer is, “No.” I think whoever I told to go see this movie would be upset with me afterwards. But is it worth checking out when it hits streaming? Sure. There’s enough good here to, at the very least, have a nice passive viewing experience.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware story setups that have a “Screenplay No Man’s Land.” This is where there’s a gulf in between the end of the first act and the beginning of the official “adventure.” You’ll be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to make pages 30-60 entertaining.
