First Reaction: Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

NOTE: I've avoided spoiling plot or character points, as this is still opening weekend for this film. There are a few references to themes.

In 2015, writer/director Ryan Coogler made a splash on the festival circuit and with critics, with his feature film debut Fruitvale Station. A film documenting the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, who was killed by police on a subway platform, while handcuffed and sitting on the floor. It was also the beginning of his creative collaboration with Michael B. Jordan, who as a teenager had been a regular supporting character on the seminal HBO drama, The Wire and was beginning to carve out his career as an adult.

Fruitvale Station revealed a filmmaker with an uncanny eye for mixing the beauty, humanity and horror of what it is to be Black in a nation that has steadfastly refused to confront the racism built into it, and turning it into compelling, heart wrenching filmmaking. He next took that eye in a surprising direction, by pitching Sylvester Stallone and Irwin Winkler on Creed, a film which both continued the story of the iconic character Stallone and Winkler created, Rocky Balboa, while spinning the franchise into new territory with Michael B. Jordan playing the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky's opponent turned friend and confidante in the franchise original run. It was the first indication Coogler could take that sense of humanity and instill it in a film that was also developed with the intent to be a crowd pleaser, something that could be targeted to a wide audience. Creed was something of a surprise hit with audiences and even among the jaded critical community who was already tiring of franchise films, reboots and so on.

The success of Creed, as well as Coogler's clear talent, put him on what was then the biggest stage in the world when he was tapped to make the long awaited Black Panther for Marvel. In many ways, it was Black Panther that demonstrated Coogler as a generational talent. He pulled off the small miracle of jumping into the middle of a franchise deep into its run, centering a character already introduced in other films, satisfied the Marvel of it all by making the story relevant to the greater universe, while also instilling it with his clear love for Black people and Black culture, globally.

Bringing Black Panther's fictional nation of Wakanda to the screen was a challenge few filmmakers would have been up to, and Coogler somehow exceeded the expectations of even the most jaded movie fans and fans of the character. The film reached rarified territory to become a mainstream cultural event, and due to Coogler's talent, it became the even more rare example of a mainstream cultural event unapologetically, unabashedly in love with and centering Blackness and a cast of Black leads. It grossed over a billion dollars at the box office, and only Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of eleven years and twenty-three other films, was able to match it as a cinematic event. No matter how one may feel about the way Marvel has effected the greater landscape of Hollywood and studio filmmaking, Black Panther was an astonishing achievement from a young filmmaker who was proving himself among the best in the business.

Now, after months of promotion, and a few years of anticipation from those of us who follow film news, Coogler's latest, Sinners, hit theaters this weekend. I have not seen movie fans this excited about going to theaters since the Barbenheimer hubbub in 2023, when both Barbie and Oppenheimer were getting nationwide releases on the same weekend.

Movie fans, not just horror fans, have every reason to be excited. Sinners is Coogler using the status and cache of having directed a billion dollar blockbuster, and it's nearly billion dollar grossing follow up (Black Panter: Wakanda Forever), to create something completely, utterly his own, and something that may just be new in cinema more generally. The script and "package" for Sinners, inspired a bidding war, in part because of Coogler's success and name recognition, as a result of which he was able to secure a deal with Warner Bros. to finance it that included what today is almost unthinkable for a film of this cost, scale and that's been given the scale of release and promotion it has. Part of Coogler's deal was that he would have final cut, meaning Warner Bros. was not going to be able to require edits or decide the final shape of the film that hit theaters, and you can feel this in the film.

Sinners is the work of someone drunk on the love of cinema and it's possibilities, and it shows in every frame, every note of the score and soundtrack. He tears down the boundaries of genre, and the glee of running with his twin love of film and Black people, pulses through the entire film. It's set in Mississippi Delta in 1932, following Michael B. Jordan doing double duty as identical twins Smoke and Stack, as returning home to the Delta, after having been involved in organized crime in Chicago, with dreams of running a successful juke joint. It is a film about the blues, about Jim Crow, about art as the repository for cultural memory, history, hope, salvation and damnation, and it is as unapologetically centered in Blackness as Black Panther. Here though, instead of pulling from Marvel's history of a character and pan nationalism of Blackness throughout the world, it is has both feet planted in the history of Black people in the United States.

It is simultaneously, Coogler's demonstration that he can bring a type of filmmaking which has been considered too artsy, too abstract, too surreal, to a film made with the intent of reaching and seducing a mainstream audience. It is a dizzying display of how firmly he understands using the moving image to convey ideas and tell a story. It is kinetic, alive and pulsing with his enthusiasm, his love of the performers and types of performance which cross the screen throughout the film. There are scenes in the film using a visual language which no filmmaker without a deal giving them final cut could have gotten past a studio. This is in no way to suggest it is going to present some challenge to audiences unfamiliar with films less interested in a mainstream audience, and that may be one of the its most impressive achievements. He is able to insert moments and scenes which are surreal, nearly psychedelic, almost hallucinatory, with it being organic, and crystal clear in what it is the audience is seeing, and why it's important.

I have to confess, there is a scene in this film that brought me to tears, simply for presenting a visual distillation of things I have believed about the arts, including music, for most of my life. I've never seen it visually represented in a film before. I've heard people talk about it in the same or similar perspective, but Sinners makes it plain, and gives it corporeal form, with the kind of ecstatic, reverential energy that felt as if were pulled from my own stumbling efforts to express it related to the art forms I love, including music.

Coogler's script is as free from care of convention as his visual presentation. Sinners is part gangster drama, part horror film, part music film, and part lesson in the realities of life for Black people in the Mississippi Delta of Jim Crow. It's an indictment of the promises of assimilation from the predatory, while being a celebration of the power of arts and community among the marginalized. It does all this, while being a rousing crowd pleaser, with a deep sense of the what makes family, and why that matters.

With all of this being true, what may be most impressive about Sinners and Ryan Coogler as writer/director is how clear it is and how unflinching his trust in the audience for the film is, and how uninterested he is in pandering or kowtowing. At no point does it feel like he pulled a punch or tried to make the film more comfortable for those who might not be comfortable with a film with both feet firmly planted in Black history, folkore, music and life. He approaches his disinterest in genre parameters in the same way.

The confidence in his artistic vision, and the audience ability to get on board with in, in all its Blackness, its genre mashing glee and its approach to the abstract, the surreal, the spiritual and the ugliness the world of the film inspires, is complete and without self consciousness. If you sit down with Sinners, you are willing to take the ride. If you're not, it's not his problem to solve. He is not interested in convincing you that you need to overcome whatever barrier may be keeping you from doing so. This is the story he's telling, he's confident in his ability to tell it well (as he well should be), and you're in or you're not. It is one of the things most often missing from films directed at a mainstream audience, and even if it's partially due to Coogler securing a deal for final cut, it's impressive, and part of what makes the film work so well.

Coogler hasn't executed all of this alone though. This is an ensemble cast, and every single one of them is up to the unenviable task of bringing Sinners to life. Michael B. Jordan got a significant boost in his career status in Black Panther. His portrayal of Killmonger is memorable, but it didn't quite send him to A list, leading man status either. Here, he is emitting Movie Star charisma, in two roles. Both performances are excellent. I expect Jordan is now going to be among that A list of male leads. That none of the supporting players are drowned out in how charismatic and captivating Jordan is, is testament to the top tier work they're doing, not least of which is newcomer Miles Caton, who no doubt has a long career ahead of him. Haley Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Jack O'Connell, Li Jun Li, Wunmi Mosaku, Saul Williams, and Jayme Lawson are all doing heavy lifting at different points, and at no point does the film feel like it's losing something for it. Then there is the music by composer Ludwig Göransson, who also produced the soundtrack, and his contribution to how much the music gives this film.

There is no weak link in this films production. Every aspect of it is what you'd expect from films from those filmmakers who have long been recognized as masters, and for whom everyone in movies wants to work. Coogler is known to work with the same people, whenever he can, and it's clear why. He's found people who are among the best at what they do, and everything here, from sound design, set design, costumes, makeup... every detail suggests the people behind it are among the best at what they do.

Additionally, Sinners may be the rare instance that I'll go see a film in the theaters multiple times. The beauty of the image quality overall is stunning. There are also instances of stunning cinematography, that are breathtaking. Finally, there is the part that the music plays in the film, and since I do not have a home theater set up that cost me thirty thousand dollars, I want to once again be enveloped in the way the music helps to create, deepen and expand the world of the film. If you can see this film in IMAX, I cannot suggest it heavily enough. In an act of genius, Coogler has released a video explaining why he shot the film in IMAX format, and what seeing it in an IMAX theater adds to the experience. Beyond his sheer talent, I'm now in Coogler's corner for his attempt to reach a more general movie audience and help expand their understanding of the medium and its capabilities. This is something more filmmakers and film stars should be doing. Give people every possible reason to become interested in film, and maybe it will help the flagging theater industry.

I unabashedly loved Sinners, and not only will I be seeing it again in theaters, it's likely to become a film I revisit many, many times.