Sinners: A Movie This Good Has To Be a Sin

By Thom Ernst

Rating: A+

Sinners, the new film directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, needs no more than a one-word review; Stunning. Magical also works. So does unforgettable.

Sinners is one of the most entertaining surprises to arrive in theatres in a long time. Coogler's film is intellectually stimulating, with an open narrative and a rambling pleasure.  Going into the theatre knowing just that should be fine. Knowing less is even better.

Disclosing the plot threatens to reduce the overall experience. On the other hand, the trailer, which I’ve seen, lasts nearly two minutes and reveals almost every unique beat of the film. Yet I still managed to be surprised.

Michael B. Jordan as “Smoke” in Sinners

Coogler earned his pedigree as a natural-born storyteller as the director of Creed and Black Panther. Sinners is the first film Coogler has made without the benefit of an already existing story. The story is a Coogler original, allowing him the freedom to use film as a sprawling canvas to tell a story not even the screen can hold.

Coogler works on the imagination, getting into our minds, triggering a journey that breaks the limitations of the theatre.  Sinners is a movie that benefits from seeing it on the biggest, all-encompassing screen available.

The movie will be met with comparisons to director Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk to Dawn, and though the connections aren’t inaccurate (Coogler himself has admitted to being influenced by Rodriguez’s film), the resemblance between the films is as valid as comparing limericks to poetry.  

Sinners is a ballad; a film that takes shape in beats and stanzas, in illusions and imagery. It sings and moves and burns through the roof of all that we can imagine. It’s all magic whether it’s an alluring dance number, a magnificent tracking shot through a small-town street reinterpreted again as a similar shot through a crowded dance floor, a glorious merging of the past, present, and future, or an impish tune from a trio of Irish troubadours.

Although I’m hesitant to reveal anything about the story, expectations demand I give some context to this review.  I’ve deemed this much as being safe to tell: The story takes audiences back to Mississippi, circa 1932. Slavery is made unconstitutional, but segregation remains the norm.

For the the notorious Smokestack twins, Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” (both played with distinct quirks and manners by Michael B. Jordan) freedom is a word without meaning.  The brothers, both World War I veterans, high-tailed it to Chicago leaving behind grieving lovers and their broken dreams but returned to their hometown as wealthy men with violent reputations. They are equally admired, feared, and respected. They purchase an abandoned millhouse and turn it into a backwoods juke joint, enlist the town’s top blues players, the best in bartenders, bouncers and cooks, like a hired gun collecting a crew of top fighters.

The first act of the film is in no hurry to get to the second act. Like a leisurely stopover on a long vacation, Sinners languishes in the moment. It’s when characters are introduced before heading towards the most explosive night of their lives.

There’s Sammie (Miles Caton) the son of the local pastor who has the devil’s gift to play the blues; Pearline (Jayme Lawson) a sultry blues singer whose dancing conjures up a storm on stage and in Sammie’s loins; Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) the mixed heritage woman (like the actor herself) whose romantic past with one of the brothers threatens to drive a wooden spike into the boys’ dreams; Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) the hard-drinking no-bullshit wise old blues singer; Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li) the Asian couple who run the local grocery; Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) the husky, easy-going enforcer and Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), the local sorcerous, psychic, healer and mother to her and Smoke’s deceased child.

Then there is there are the trio of outsiders, Remmick (Jack O'Connell), Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Joan (Lola Kirke), who stop to visit, giving cinema the most whimsically devilish twist on villainy ever to be entertained on film.

A lot happens in Sinners even before a lot happens, but when the music kicks in and the joint starts hopping, all hell breaks loose. Some of the best scenes in cinema happen in the course it takes for Coogler to tell his story. And Coogler tells the story the way he wants.  Directing from his own script, Coogler has created a gothic horror musical epic, with encompassing detail, unearthly magic, and historic accuracy. A bombastic meditation on race, freedom, confinement and the magical, sinful, erotic release that can only come from music.

Sinners is a movie to see again and again and again. And then, go see it with friends.

And that’s all that needs to be said.

(Except for the part when the vampires come). 

Sinners. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. Starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Yao, Omar Benson Miller, Wunmi Mosaku, Li Jun Li, Delroy Lindo, Jack O’Connell, Peter Dreimanis, and Lola Kirke. In theatres April 18.