A-Directed by Ryan Coogler Starring Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, and Hailee Steinfeld Review by Jon Kissel |  |
It took 12 years and 5 movies, but Ryan Coogler finally steps out of the shadow of IP for an original blockbuster with Sinners. Notwithstanding based-on-a-true-story Fruitvale Station, Coogler’s talents have been applied to legacy sequels and franchise work to oft-excellent effect. With Sinners, it feels like something that was supposed to happen years ago has finally come to pass. Coogler’s Jim Crow vampire thriller, featuring a dual-lead performance from mainstay Michael B. Jordan, has stayed in theaters for months and reaped the box office benefits. A film with that kind of longevity, especially in an environment when movies are on on-demand three weeks after debut, is an increasingly rare treat. Sinners deserves to be savored to the last drop.
Jordan stars as twins Smoke and Stack, back in their Mississippi hometown after fighting in WWI and escaping from the Chicago mob with a truckload of cash and booze. The twins return as local legends, conquering heroes of two continents with plans to open a juke joint. Coogler, working from his own script, takes his time introducing the twins and the townsfolk, layering in their dynamic and history in a first hour that’s uneventful compared to the rest of Sinners but just as entertaining. His time in the MCU has honed his talent for world-building, and Clarkston, Mississippi is just as vivid as Wakanda. Surrounding the twins are Smoke’s earthy ex-wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), Stack’s biracial ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), and their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a musical prodigy and preacher’s son. They secure a building, a band including Delroy Lindo, and food from the Chinese shopkeeper couple in preparation for tonight’s grand opening.
As night falls and the party gets started, the supernatural starts to intrude. Annie, a hoodoo practitioner, gives a disembodied voiceover in one of the film’s few missteps, and she speaks about the power of music to tear the veil between worlds and times when it’s performed by someone of appropriate skill. Sammie is so gifted, and the film’s showcase scene is one of those flashy one-rs that every blockbuster requires. Sinners sets itself up for a test, where Annie’s voiceover demands that the ecstasy she’s describing equals the filmmaking. Coogler meets his self-imposed bar as Sammie takes the mic, belting out a blues banger that burns the place down in a fit of magical realism. While Sammie’s talent pulls spirits from across time and space to dance with the assembled, it also attracts nastier things like Jack O’Connell’s Remmick, an Irish vampire who’s already attacked and turned two local musicians. Drawn to Sammie and his potential to directly connect Remmick to the Irish troubadours of his centuries-ago youth, the vampire band alights on the juke joint, desperate to be get in.
The choice to make the vampires Irish, complete with a big step-dancing number as Remmick grows his flock, is a brilliant one that lends the film a depth greater than its thriller cover. As boisterous and fun as the film up to its bloody turn is, the racial terror of the setting is never far from anyone’s mind. Out of that oppressive stew emerged musical culture that transformed the world on multiple occasions, and Coogler links Black music to Irish music as a thing that grew out of hardship, where the only recourse to boots on necks was to use those necks to sing. There’s a hierarchy of antagonism in Sinners, and the vampire isn’t at the top of it. In Remmick’s sales pitch, he’s offering solidarity against an implacable foe that can’t be beaten without some extra help. O’Connell, coming out of a ten-year rough patch after his titanic 2014 breakout trio of Starred Up, ’71, and Unbroken, is a sensational Faustian character, making a charismatic pitch for undeath and bloody power.
As good as O’Connell is, Sinners belongs to Jordan and his pair of distinct characters. The brittleness that defined all of his previous work, while an admirable quality, is neither Smoke nor Stack’s defining characteristic, and it speaks to Jordan’s evolution as an actor. Smoke, the meaner and more ruthless brother, is portrayed with a resolve and an anger reminiscent of an iron action anti-hero, while Stack, a born glad-hander whose deep well of charisma couldn’t be exhausted by trench warfare, credibly disarms everyone he comes in contact with. What both characters share is a plain-spoken love for each other that instantly endears them to the audience.
Having toiled in the PG-13 mass market for so long, Coogler is clearly eager to get back into the R-rated swimming pool. Befitting a Southern setting, this is a sweaty film, and the heat isn’t only coming from the temperature. Having not made a horny film thus far, Sinners qualifies as that for Coogler. Bodily fluids are eagerly swapped and gobbled up, before and after the vampires arrive. However, in introducing this new flavor to his repertoire, Coogler, like Homer Simpson taking a wine-making course and forgetting how to drive, seems to have forgotten how to film action. The mastermind behind Creed’s incredible fight scenes makes a mess of Sinners’ third act as geography gets lost and the film settles for implausible visual shortcuts. These don’t break the film, as Coogler has done the work to make what’s happening to the characters feel vital even if the A-to-B choreography isn’t there, but the discrepancy between Sinners’ climax and what Coogler has taught his audience to expect is there. Coupled with the aforementioned voiceover and a pointless in media res opening fit for the streaming era, where films must hook the viewer in the first few minutes or they’ll choose something else, Sinners is a flawed film whose ecstatic moments are strong enough to still make it one of 2025’s best. A-
As night falls and the party gets started, the supernatural starts to intrude. Annie, a hoodoo practitioner, gives a disembodied voiceover in one of the film’s few missteps, and she speaks about the power of music to tear the veil between worlds and times when it’s performed by someone of appropriate skill. Sammie is so gifted, and the film’s showcase scene is one of those flashy one-rs that every blockbuster requires. Sinners sets itself up for a test, where Annie’s voiceover demands that the ecstasy she’s describing equals the filmmaking. Coogler meets his self-imposed bar as Sammie takes the mic, belting out a blues banger that burns the place down in a fit of magical realism. While Sammie’s talent pulls spirits from across time and space to dance with the assembled, it also attracts nastier things like Jack O’Connell’s Remmick, an Irish vampire who’s already attacked and turned two local musicians. Drawn to Sammie and his potential to directly connect Remmick to the Irish troubadours of his centuries-ago youth, the vampire band alights on the juke joint, desperate to be get in.
The choice to make the vampires Irish, complete with a big step-dancing number as Remmick grows his flock, is a brilliant one that lends the film a depth greater than its thriller cover. As boisterous and fun as the film up to its bloody turn is, the racial terror of the setting is never far from anyone’s mind. Out of that oppressive stew emerged musical culture that transformed the world on multiple occasions, and Coogler links Black music to Irish music as a thing that grew out of hardship, where the only recourse to boots on necks was to use those necks to sing. There’s a hierarchy of antagonism in Sinners, and the vampire isn’t at the top of it. In Remmick’s sales pitch, he’s offering solidarity against an implacable foe that can’t be beaten without some extra help. O’Connell, coming out of a ten-year rough patch after his titanic 2014 breakout trio of Starred Up, ’71, and Unbroken, is a sensational Faustian character, making a charismatic pitch for undeath and bloody power.
As good as O’Connell is, Sinners belongs to Jordan and his pair of distinct characters. The brittleness that defined all of his previous work, while an admirable quality, is neither Smoke nor Stack’s defining characteristic, and it speaks to Jordan’s evolution as an actor. Smoke, the meaner and more ruthless brother, is portrayed with a resolve and an anger reminiscent of an iron action anti-hero, while Stack, a born glad-hander whose deep well of charisma couldn’t be exhausted by trench warfare, credibly disarms everyone he comes in contact with. What both characters share is a plain-spoken love for each other that instantly endears them to the audience.
Having toiled in the PG-13 mass market for so long, Coogler is clearly eager to get back into the R-rated swimming pool. Befitting a Southern setting, this is a sweaty film, and the heat isn’t only coming from the temperature. Having not made a horny film thus far, Sinners qualifies as that for Coogler. Bodily fluids are eagerly swapped and gobbled up, before and after the vampires arrive. However, in introducing this new flavor to his repertoire, Coogler, like Homer Simpson taking a wine-making course and forgetting how to drive, seems to have forgotten how to film action. The mastermind behind Creed’s incredible fight scenes makes a mess of Sinners’ third act as geography gets lost and the film settles for implausible visual shortcuts. These don’t break the film, as Coogler has done the work to make what’s happening to the characters feel vital even if the A-to-B choreography isn’t there, but the discrepancy between Sinners’ climax and what Coogler has taught his audience to expect is there. Coupled with the aforementioned voiceover and a pointless in media res opening fit for the streaming era, where films must hook the viewer in the first few minutes or they’ll choose something else, Sinners is a flawed film whose ecstatic moments are strong enough to still make it one of 2025’s best. A-
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