A One Mann’s Movies review of “Sinners” (2025).
Ryan Coogler can’t be accused of giving us dull films: his last three directorial outings have been Creed; Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In all of those films he might have been considered as being on a bit of a ‘leash’: Sylvester Stallone, guardian of the Rocky legacy, was co-writer on the former and he had a co-writer (and the Marvel corporation, no doubt!) to deal with in the latter two. With “Sinners” though, he is the sole writer and you feel that he has really let rip with the screenplay. It goes to very surprising and innovative places.
There are a lot of spoilers out there about the content of this film (including in the trailer)…. I will choose to avoid repeating them in this review, since if you can see this film cold then that is a big advantage.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
“Sinners” Plot:
Twins Smoke and Stack (both Michael B. Jordan) have been in Al Capone’s gang in Chicago and arrive back home in Mississippi with a sack-full of cash and a ton of attitude. Their plan is to open a gin-joint in a barn outside of town and they invite two gifted blues musicians – Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) and Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) – to play there. But it’s said that “there are legends of people with the gift of making music so true it can conjure spirits from the past and from the future” as well as attracting evil.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong bloody violence, gore, horror, language, sex, sex references, racism”. Once again, I am a bit surprised at how much violence and sex can be shown in a ’15’ certificate film…. this one I think is certainly pushing the envelope.)
Talent:
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, Saul Williams, Andrene Ward-Hammond, Jack O’Connell, Tenaj L. Jackson, Yao, Li Jun Li, Helena Hu, David Maldonado, Hailee Steinfeld, Theodus Crane.
Directed by: Ryan Coogler.
Written by: Ryan Coogler.
Running Time: 2h 17m.
“Sinners” Summary:
Positives:
- Classy horror/thriller with well-formed characters and a gory pay-off.
- The ensemble acting is terrific.
- A brilliant jazz music score with some great vocal performances.
Negatives:
- The first half of the film felt quite slow and a different beast from the second half.
- Some of the plot was quite difficult to follow, with muttered lines.
- The organisation timeline seemed a little unlikely!
Review of “Sinners”:
A moody and brooding build up.
It’s set in a time-period that I found difficult to pin down. It feels like we are in the late 19th century. At one point I saw a plane flying in the background and thought “oops, that’s a continuity error”. But we are actually in 1930 Mississippi within the (beautifully filmed) cotton fields. But life still feels very ‘Wild West’. It’s only late in the film do we realise that the SmokeStack twins are actually ex-Chicago gangsters as well as ex-WW1 trench comrades, which explains their extreme reactions to being slighted.
All of this is very slowly developed over the first half of the film, but I really found some of it difficult to follow: much of the dialogue I found to be muffled and together with the accents there were times when I was eager for subtitles. For example, I struggled to understand the nature of the relationship between Smoke and Beatrice (Tenaj L. Jackson). When they met I thought they might be brother and sister, but then events took a turn and I figured that wasn’t the case! (Although, this being the Deep South, who knows!!)
Some fine jazz.
A star of the show is the music soundtrack. The music is by Ludwig Göransson but features a range of blues pieces from the 1930s and 1940s, particularly those by Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson. But we also get a smattering of eclectic Irish-folk, gospel, jazz, and soul music. In one particularly innovative sequence, where past merges with present and future, we get an even wider range of traditional as well as very current music styles.
This innovation is present throughout the movie. At one point, as the jazz gets super-heated, the barn burns to the ground around them… but not really, only stylistically.
A fine ensemble cast.
Michael B. Jordan does a cracking job in the dual roles of Smoke and Stack. And in this film (unlike “The Alto Knights“) the two characters ARE actually related… and they are not just “cousins” as Stack misleads Hogwood (David Maldonado) at their first meeting!
But supporting Jordan is such a fine cast that it wouldn’t surprise me if this film got one of the SAG Ensemble Cast nominations at the end of the year. Miles Caton does a truly extraordinary job in his debut performance. Not only does he have great screen presence as the talented youngster, but his vocal performances of the blues songs are something else. Also notable for me are Delroy Lindo as the older blues expert, Jack O’Connell as a seriously creepy rancher and Hailee Steinfeld as the seductive Mary.
The horror is pretty horrific.
You need to wait for the second half of the film before you hit the twist in the tale. And when the horror comes, it comes in hard. I won’t disclose the nature of the horror (although the trailer gives it away). But it is a pervasive threat and one that keeps coming back in different forms for the rest of the movie until a spectacular finale, driven by impressive effects.
But wait. I got past that finale and I thought “I haven’t seen that impressive slo-mo shot of Michael B. Jordan firing the machine gun”. As it turns out, there is a satisfyingly bloody end-act to get through that was impressive and stylishly done.
A Need to Suspend Your Disbelief.
Given that there are supernatural elements to this story, you might think that this element of unreality is the least of my worries. But an aspect of the film that annoyed me were the timescales. The whole film is set over an elapsed period of 24 hours (we start at the end and then flash-back). But the brothers haven’t even secured the barn by the start, let alone arranged the musicians, signage, food, drink, bunting and a guaranteed audience at the start of that day. Yet they are laying on the event that very evening! It all didn’t ring true with me, regardless of how pushy they were and how much money they threw at things.
Monkeys?
Yes, and then some (Coogler doesn’t know when to quit!). The film has an extensive mid-credit “monkey” that extends the story in a really interesting way. There is also a post-credits “monkey” with the talented Miles Caton bashing out a section of another blues classic.
Summary Thoughts on “Sinners”
I’m always desperate to see something “different” at the cinema and in that regard Ryan Coogler certainly delivered. It’s not perfect in my view. But “Sinners” is one of the most innovative films of the year so far and a rollicking good watch.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “Sinners”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqCwr_bzHI. The first 1m10s of this is great…. then it gets all spoilery about a topic that I’ve chosen to keep quiet about in my review. Best not seen if you want to go in cold to this one.
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