Sinners Is Ryan Coogler’s Most Original (and Most Personal) Movie Yet

WHY SINNERS? WHEN news broke back in February 2024 about writer/director Ryan Coogler’s newest project, buried inside the story was the fact that Coogler would eventually retain ownership of the movie. After years of working on other people’s projects (OPP if you’re nasty), here was this “period genre pic,” as described by the trades, as something he would stake out on his own to claim. Yet even as the Warner Bros. marketing machine spun up and audiences learned more about the plot, the proverbial why of Coogler’s intent lingers in the air like the summer haze of the film’s Mississippi Delta setting.

After watching Sinners, that question is answered in short order. While the plot of the movie is about many things, the most engrossing thematic reading is one of creative ownership. Despite Coogler’s meteoric output thus far, Sinners is the first wholly original work. Creed, Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and even Fruitvale Station are adaptations of fictional or non-fictional stories. The whole plot of Sinners hinges around twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan, more magnetic than ever in his roles as the two) and their quest to define a creative space for their community. We see Smoke and Stack going around town to recruit Black artisans, most of whom are working for someone else, to come together as collaborators in the service of a larger purpose. It’s time for an “opening night” in a space created entirely for “just for us,” not unlike how Coogler went about selecting his co-workers for this project.

As Sinners continues, there’s a throughline about the power of art. It’s not shocking that the second Sammie (Miles Caton) creates art so good that it transcends space and time, literal blood suckers show up at the doors asking for a piece. One could hypothesize about the number of studios that knocked on Coogler’s door in the wake of his success, wanting to snap up his talents for projects or creative works he was totally uninterested in, just so the studio could say they were in the Coogler business. Or, as the villainous Remmick (Jack O’Connell) so aptly puts it, “I want your stories.” Coogler’s ideas and storytelling are so valuable that people will kill to get them.

But more so, Coogler telling this particular narrative allows him the freedom he’s not had on prior projects. Sure, there was room within the confines of the Rocky and Marvel machines to put some of himself into the work, but not like this, and not with this Michael B. Jordan performance, which feels like the actor arriving at a leading-man peak. It’s also telling to have a moment where Jordan explicitly talks about having the chance to be together forever. Granted, that’s a loaded conversation within the context of the film, but it serves as a treatise for the creative partnership between the two. It’s a moment that seemingly declares an intention to stick together until the wheels fall off.

“Tell them who you are, where you’re from,” Delroy Lindo’s Delta Slim says before Sammie plays his song around the midpoint. But in many ways, this is just as much about Coogler as it is about Sammie. Here’s a creative force directly reckoning with his own history of having a grandfather he never knew from the Delta and using that as a way to spin up a parable about the power of owning your stories. It’s a fitting conclusion that in the future, this particular story will loop back around and become Coogler’s to own and tell as he sees fit.

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