Sinners

Sinners is a sensation. I have no hesitation in recommending it, and so will not hesitate to do so. Go and see it while you have the chance, and do so in a proper movie theatre. Sinners is cinema, leveraging every inch of screen and every ounce of sound. You may have seen media coverage weighing it by box office but that's the emptiest of measures. It is wall to wall quality.

Ryan Coogler writes, directs, works again with Michael B Jordan. Those two names working together are a guarantee of quality, with Jordan in particular delivering not one but two performances. As the Smokestack twins, Elias and Elijah, he's doubly and distinctly charismatic. They've been to Chicago, but have come back to Mississippi to make a contribution to the community. They've learned lessons across the world, sharply dressed in the heights of Irish and Italian gangster fashion, one red, one blue. Like blood, these brothers, sartorial and vengeful, arterial and venous.

Jordan's are the headline roles, but they are in a large ensemble cast that has several highlights. Miles Caton, in particular, is a revelation. As Sammie, the twins' young cousin, he's at the heart of a film that finds several ways to get hearts pulsing. There's something already magical in Caton's voice. He has a gospel background but this is an astonishing début acting role. While there might be questions about pacing it's vital to stay all the way to the end. There's scenes containing significant details not just in the credits but after them. They do more than enough to justify earlier moments of hanging out. As with Fruitvale Station this is as much about community as individuals, and how one becomes the other.

It's also a credible horror movie, with jump scares and buckets of blood. From Dusk Till Dawn was in part a showcase for special effects firm KNB EFX. After Robert Kurtzman wrote the treatment, Quentin Tarantino was hired to write the script. He then brought Robert Rodriguez on board to direct. This has similarities, including a variety of tone that heightens contrasts, and if you enjoyed that film then I'm confident you'll get this. And vice-versa, in truth. I mention another film not because this is derivative - if there are new ideas under the sun, Hollywood shuns them - but because it's found a new alloy in the melting pot of culture. A strong one, a glorious one.

There's a tremendous tracking shot that follows someone walking between segregated stores. It's at once a nod to Goodfellas but more than that it does the same thing. It shows us how a part of the world works, and from the perspective of someone who navigates it unconsciously. It feels reductive to say that it's just good film-making, but to make things simple and obvious without making them obviously simple is a challenge Coogler clearly relishes. It's one of several scenes that showcase his talent as both a writer and director. That said, there's one sequence that's an absolute standout.

The twins ask Sammie to play at their Juke Joint. They've got Delroy Lindo's Delta Slim as the headliner, but they gave Sammie his guitar and its got a magic to it. More than that, he's got a magic to him. Ludwig Goransson composes, and the assembled performances around Miles Caton's that become I Lied To You are transporting, transformative, transcendent. Time and space collapse around a bit of Mississippi blues that is at once brand new and nearly a century old. If it doesn't get nominated for Best Original Song when works that only played over the credits have won, there is no justice.

It's a climactic moment in the film, a turning point that's as profound as it is propulsive. Every once in a while one is reminded why film as a medium works as well as it does because something comes along and does everything right. Sinners does that in one scene, a swooping stomping swirling swaggering sensation.

I was uneasy about its use of flashbacks, but that was a mistake of the moment. Sinners, like its twins, is to be considered as a whole. That includes its endings. It starts with one of them, and after the credits it has another. A looping there. A refrain, a reprise, a recurrence, a reflection. Some of those flashbacks are repetition, others a new angle on events, a refraction, yet more things unseen but implied by consequence, revelation.

There are interwoven gothic romances, Hailee Steinfeld's Mary and Tenaj Jackson's Beatrice have history with the twins and it's deftly drawn and deeply moving. They're part of a wider community, from Omar Miller's Cornbread to the Chow family (Li Jun Li, Helena Hu, Yao), but one that's threatened by a militant status quo. David Maldonado's Hogwood is just part of a set of systems of suppression, from scrip for the company store to sharecropping to the Klan. Even the twins' uncle, Sammie's father, might be part of the system. Saul Williams' preacher is in the opening, but his is one of several shadows that loom across proceedings.

The darkest of those is Jack O'Connell's Remmick. TV viewers might know him as the charismatic Paddy Mayne, one of the Rogue Heroes of the SAS. He's even more devilish here, but the capacity for aggressive intent and speed of violent action is well in evidence. As is a musicality that's intense in its impact. This isn't a musical, but music runs through it, as vital to proceedings as words or pictures or editing. Coogler's brought quality to genre before, his Black Panther remains a high water mark for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was the 18th in that franchise and we've now twice as many, but only Thor: Love And Thunder comes close to attaining the same moral and thematic weights, and even then so inconstantly as to seem at times accidental.

Sinners is much more purposeful. Like The Omega Man or I Am Legend it assumes a familiarity with certain supernatural tropes in order to use and subvert them. In an inclusive canon that features films like Renfield and The Faculty (https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-faculty-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) Sinners puts flesh on the older bones of its stories and galvanises them into new life. Though I've mentioned several other works this makes something that feels at once old and new, like it's always been waiting to be discovered.

There's two works by Robert Rodriguez mentioned so far, something that builds on the work of Bram Stoker and latterly Murnau, Richard Matheson doing the same, twice. Scorsese, Tarantino too. Among those creators, even auteurs, plenty of borrowing and building. This feels like a Stephen King from a parallel universe. It's near to Near Dark in places, to Doctor Sleep. Again I mention other films not because this is derivative, but distinct. It can stand among them. If there are new ideas under the sun Hollywood shuns them, and some of the reporting around this film is born of the deal that Coogler struck with the studios. That's also because it's found a new alloy in the melting pot of culture. A strong one, a glorious one. A respectful one too.

There are credited cultural consultants for the Mississipi Choctaw. They appear in one scene, a moment across the setting sun, the doorstep and the porch. Those few moments imply a succession of other stories. Stories that will build up and into this one. There's a hug between the Smokestack twins that is medicinal in its masculinity, one that implies as much as the other words they use for and around their family. The stories they tell and have told.

They are sinners for sure. The film's age rating is as high because we've got all seven of the deadlies and a score of the graves and mortals. With religious elements abounding there's opportunity to dig deep for treasures. The phase of the moon is right, just shy of full in its gibbousness. Elijah, also known as Elias, a prophet. The date a score of feast days, and given the scale of the stories told within them possibly of alternate calendars. One of them might therefore include Longinius, a soldier (like the brothers) of note.

There's so much of astonishing quality here that a few weaker notes from production realities are readily forgiven. Among location shooting from cottonfields to churchyards some compositing in front of trains and tracks is a little clumsy. Coogler's no stranger to special effects from his time with Marvel and there's nothing off here that hasn't been worse there. The freedom to make his own decisions here means that the gouts of grand guignol didn't have to go through parliamentary procedure or comic continuity committees. They're all the more vibrant for it.

Sinners is like all these other works I've named not as a copy but as company. It's deserving of a place in the pantheon of pictures that you ought to see. I'll finish where I started, as the film does. Sinners is a sensation. I have no hesitation in recommending it. Go and see it while you have the chance, and do so in a proper movie theatre.

Reviewed on: 03 May 2025