Sinners (2025) Review & Summary

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Sinners Film Details

• Runtime: 2 Hour(s) and 17 Minutes
• Date Seen: April 17, 2025

• Released On: In Theaters
• Director(s): Ryan Coogler
• Writer(s): Ryan Coogler
• Genre(s): Action, Drama, Horror, Romance, Thriller, Historical
• Rating: Rated R
• Distributor: Warner Bros.

Summary

In 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi, twin brothers, Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” have returned from Chicago and no sooner than their return spreads through town they announce they are opening, in the old saw mill, “Club Juke” and alongside the popular local musician, Delta Slim, their little cousin, Preacher Boy Sammie, will be playing and at first, everything is going well. Yes, Smoke had to shoot some people who tried to steal his liquor, but otherwise, things were going good.

Heck, for Stack, his old flame Mary even happened to be in town, albeit to bury her mother, who helped raise the twins, and you could tell they still pined for each other something awful, and despite Smoke’s feelings, they can’t help but orbit one another until they collide. But, despite the beauty of the day in reconnection and anticipation, the night is hell, blood is spilled, bodies hit the floor, and by sunrise, very few remain, all thanks to one vampire named Remmick, who can feel some semblance of a soul thanks to the blues Sammie plays. This leads to him wanting Sammie, and anyone else who can play or enjoy blues music, to join his coven.

Cast and Characters

Elijah “Smoke” (Michael B. Jordan)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]

• Character Summary: Often wearing blue, Smoke, government name Elijah, can be seen as the leader between the twins if not the one who presents himself as an authority figure, which Stack allows to be seen as such. Contribute this to a more mature mindset, and Smoke often takes care of Stack more like he is his little brother than a twin – and this includes using violence, like he allegedly did against their father, to protect Stack.

Elias “Stack” (Michael B. Jordan)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: Consider Stack the fun one between the twins, but with just as much of a penchant for violence. However, Stack would seem to prefer peace, a good time, maybe a fun story shared, over brutalizing a person.

Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: A musician for most of his life, Delta Slim has become popular locally, and if you catch him off stage, he always has a story to tell about his life, often giving a reason he barely keeps money on him and drinks a good portion of it away.

Preacher Boy Sammie (Miles Caton)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: Cousin of the Smoke Stack twins, via his preacher daddy being the brother of the Smoke Stack twins’ father, Sammie has been running behind the twins a good part of his life, and Stack has invested in the boy via a guitar he says was won in a betting game. Sammie has taken to that guitar, and while the blues brings nothing but trouble in Sinners, even with the violence it causes, Sammie finds it hard to let music go.

Mary (Hailee Steinfeld)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: Mary is a gal who was raised around the Smoke Stack twins, via her mother caring for them throughout their youth, and during this time she had a reciprocal love with Stack. However, with being fair-skinned and easily passing for White due to being almost two generations removed from a half-black grandfather, many troubles caused Stack and Mary to be unable to be together in life, with any guarantee of safety between them.

Annie (Wunmi Mosaku)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: Annie is a priestess, assumingly Yoruba, who loves her some Smoke, and he loves her back. They were even together to the point of potentially having a child. Alas, things happened, and the distance between them caused some animosity, but even with Smoke far away, Annie used her magic, her energy, her innate power to pray for that man, and eventually he did return to her like there was no ill will or things to be forgotten.

Remmick (Jack O’Connell)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: A vampire from across the Atlantic, Remmick is a man who enjoys the fruits of being a vampire, seemingly being able to fly, know all the information and thoughts of those he sires, and has talents beyond those depicted. However, despite being portrayed as an antagonist, perhaps you shouldn’t see Remmick as an evil man. If anything, it seems he wishes to create a coven, featuring musicians and those who love good music, and share with them the lonely nights and use their familiarity with communities to make sure they can be invited to places to protect them from the sun.

Bo (Yao)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: A friend, or maybe associate, of Smoke, Bo owns, with his wife Grace, the Blacks only and Whites-only general stores in the Clarksdale area, and seemingly, if the money is green and you are good people, he’ll do business with you.

Grace (Li Jun Li)

• Check out other productions we’ve covered starring this actor: [Link to Actor’s Tag]
• Character Summary: Grace is Bo’s wife and right hand, who is Chinese and works at their store, raises their daughter, and would kill for that man. Also, she is the person who makes the “Club Juke” sign with her talents.

Why Is Sinners Rated R?

• Dialog:
  • Cursing: Occasional
  • Discriminatory Language: Yes
  • Innuendo: Moderate
  • Suicide Mentions: No
• Violence:
  • Gun Violence: Heavy
  • Violence Against Animals: Yes
  • Violence Against Children: No
  • Domestic Violence: No
  • Gore/ Blood: Heavy
  • Body Horror: Yes
  • Notable Violence: Fight Scenes
• Sexual Content:
  • Nudity: Mild
  • Sexual Situations: Implied
  • Sexual Violence: No
• Miscellaneous:
  • Drinking: Yes
  • Drug Use: No
  • Vomiting: No
  • Smoking: Yes

Links

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• Official Site Link

Review and Commentary

Highlight(s)

The Music [88/100]

Hearing the blues in Sinners is reminiscent of listening to the music of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in Challengers. Truly, you can’t listen to anything else until you have worked out of your system the music you have been imbued in you. Everything else sounds like trash, feels like a pipe cleaner in your ears, and you will find yourself seeking out the soundtrack to hear certain earworm songs over and over, like you are a little kid stuck on “Baby Shark.”

But what Sinners also does, in multiple ways, is show how soul music has evolved, inspired, and how it speaks to different cultures. In one scene where Sammie is performing, we watch as soul evolves to hip-hop and rock but also, as noted in another topic, how it can transform and for someone like Remmick, with an Irish background, you get a sense that, even if popularized by Black Americans, to speak of our pain and stories, it can translate and be felt and related to. Heck, danced to as well in styles not common amongst Black Americans, like Riverdance, yet still feel authentic to the feel of the music.

The Humor [83/100]

While the twins got jokes, and listening to Mary assert herself can certainly make you raise some eyebrows and laugh in a way that makes you think Steinfeld has waited quite a while to play someone with Black ancestry, Delroy Lindo is the one who has the most fun when it comes to Sinners. With Delta Slim, lowkey, being a drunk who has seen some things throughout his career, Lindo taps into the highs, lows, and sometimes utter nonsense Slim can come up with and even in the darkest and life threatening moments, the man will pull something that breaks the tension and will make you laugh.

Stack and Mary [85/100]

There are two surprisingly good love stories going on, and both involve the twins. For Stack and Mary, their love story includes a bit of an element of forbidden love since, with Mary being White passing, while she and Stack may very well be each other’s first, it seemed for a long time they wouldn’t be each other’s last as the times drove them apart. That and Stack’s ambitions paired with Smoke in his ear.

But, there is still chemistry with them, how Stack can’t stay away from Mary, and one of Mary’s opening lines being about the last time she and Stack had sex, which may certainly floor you. For as noted, Steinfeld gets to play a very different kind of character when it comes to Mary and you can tell, as much as Mary might be grieving her mother and frustrated with Stack, Steinfeld is having fun playing a character like Mary and Michael B. Jordan is certainly enjoying both playing off of her and riling her up.

Annie and Smoke [86/100]

While Stack and Mary have a sense of young love, maybe even forbidden love due to the time period, Annie and Smoke have something far more grown, and it gives a different sense of what Coogler wanted to show in presenting Black love as something that isn’t a monolith. Annie is a grown ass woman who has autonomy, her own business, and doesn’t appear to have had people pull her strings like a marionet. On top of that, there is a mature love between Annie and Smoke that, while as intense as Mary and Stack are, it expresses itself in a completely different way.

Annie, to me, comes off as someone Smoke isn’t chasing the skirt of, but would take any opportunity to pull her skirt up or down. And even outside of the sexual sense of things, I feel like Annie, unlike Mary, wouldn’t match her twin’s energy but instead she seeks to give him balance, a sense of calm, and watching as she plays her role in Club Juke makes them look like the kind of partnership you want when you come to a point in your life of settling down, as it seems Smoke is.

Annie and Mary As Individuals [84/100]

It is true that a lot of what Annie and Mary bring to the table is through how they love and help further establish Smoke and Stack as individuals, men, and partners. However, they are also well-established as individuals. Annie, being a Yoruba Priestess of some kind, is the one who has knowledge of what Remmick is, how to potentially fight them, and her background with Smoke creates a powerful narrative between them. Add in that she is layered to the point she can be this strong and powerful, spiritual woman, while also being playful, defending Mary when someone questions her belonging, and more? Oh, Wunmi Mosaku gives so much to Sinners.

Then, with Mary, again, there is a level of surprise when it comes to Steinfeld since, while I’m sure many know she has a Black relative, she doesn’t necessarily play characters with any presentation of being Black. Yet, her speaking as someone who is passing, the way she paints how her family has hidden their ancestry, and her desire to be amongst those she loves, and the culture she feels one with, there is just something to that narrative which feels powerful.

I would even say, if I was someone bi-racial or multi-racial, I could see something further in Mary which could feel like representation or a depiction of the complicated life of not looking like what you not only cherish but feel a sense of belonging to or from.

You’ll Find Yourself In Tears At Times [89/100]

Without giving away too much, I will admit, the way the love stories end, and watching the twins’ family or community show up for them to turn an old mill into a club, it has the potential to make you cry. And mind you, Sinners isn’t a tearjerker type of movie.

However, there is just something about seeing these men who left home and made sacrifices, and also sought out trouble to try to make the kind of money that was hard for a Black person to make, which can get to you. Especially since, like some called thugs or gangsters, you get the sense that they wanted to do big things, do something for their community. But with the way the world worked then, and maybe even now, that requires an exuberant amount of time, effort, or sacrifices that could make a dream feel impossible.

So while we can’t condone the robbing of banks, murdering, and who knows what else, it is difficult to not look at the twins and the lives they get to have, if only for a few hours, and cry both when life seems perfect for them and when it starts to fall apart.

The Connection Between Black People, Asian People, and The Irish [82/100]

Being that Ryan Coogler is from Oakland, it only feels right if he is going to do a movie set in the 1930s, to give a depiction of the relationship between Black folk and Asian people (specifically Chinese), and also the Irish. As outsiders in America at the time, there was a sense of togetherness and shared feeling of discrimination that, throughout American history, has brought the groups together.

As for what is shown in Sinners, it is watching the twins know they can go to Bo, and even rely on Grace, so their grand opening could be a hit. Mind you, do Grace and Bo play both sides to a point, with a Blacks-only shop on one side of the street and a White-only shop on the other? Yes. Yet, we get what can be seen as a separate but equal depiction, with the twins edging things out since Bo would rather the blues, and the exuberant money the twins offer to spend.

Then, when it comes to the Irish element, Remmick seems to understand and appreciate the soul of Sammie’s playing, and unlike how it is noted by Delta Slim of how many Whites want the music but not the story and people behind it, Remmick is different.

In addition, as he does a dance to what sounds and feels like blues, you see what might be a different means of expression to the blues, but it is on beat, soulful, and feels like Coogler’s way of tapping into how, at one time, Irish culture and Black culture, whether when close due to living in proximity in the Americas, or even separated by the Atlantic, was notably close in a loving way.

The Jump Scares [81/100]

Sinners might be a horror movie, but thankfully, it only has jump scares for parts of the beginning. However, those few scares do push the idea that anything could happen, and if Coogler and the team wanted, they could remove the depth pursued and just torture your nervous system.

On The Fence

Catching Onto When Watching Smoke Or Stack [78/100]

Admittedly, it may have taken me more time than it should to identify the difference between Smoke and Stack firmly. Yes, Smoke often wears blue and Stack often wears red, which is the main thing that separates them, but when they aren’t wearing a hat, or the color of Smoke’s shirt isn’t clear, mixing them up isn’t hard. Not so hard to the point that, like with real twins, you can’t pick up on mannerisms and personality traits to ultimately tell which one is which, but it could be harder to get to that point for some more than others.

Wishing The Indigenous Vampire Hunters Potentially Came Back Around [76/100]

When we first meet Remmick, he is being hunted by Indigenous vampire hunters, which raises a bit of an eyebrow. Note that Sinners starts off talking about different types of demons and monsters in various cultures and their names. But, sadly, it seems the vampire hunters don’t work at night when those like Remmick are at peak powers, so they only appear at the beginning of the film and then aren’t seen or talked about again.

Overall

Our Rating (83/100): Positive (Worth Seeing) – Recommended

Though I feel some may think I’m being extra saying this, I would put forward Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan as one of the best Director/Writer and Actor duos of all time. For one, the diversity of their work together, I don’t think, is matched. Not to call out names, but I feel Coogler has challenged Jordan as an actor in ways other combinations don’t really do.

When it comes to others, I’d submit it can often seem that once those two find a rhythm, they get comfortable and pump out work that often feels similar and as familiar as their bond. With Coogler and Jordan, it seems they know too well the lack of opportunities to showcase their talents in diverse ways, so they bring something different each time.

Alongside that, Sinners takes on a lot culturally and doesn’t make you feel it doesn’t give enough for anything it touches on. Everything is given the right dosage, and you can imagine that if it did more, the balance would be off. Add in each genre element from horror, drama, romance, even being something historical, is handled so well and truly, while I don’t see Sinners becoming a major accolade contender, I do see it as something which will have the notoriety that will not only inspire future filmmakers, but also create what could become, in time, if not a classic, at least one of the top films of this year.

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