I went to go see the movie, Sinners and it was phenomenal. Expertly shot, directed, paced and acted. Everyone is bringing their A game in this. This is the spoiler free part of the review, so go see it. Stop reading and go see it.

***SPOILERS***

The opening monologue talks about spirit singers who were able to converse with the voices of the past and future. That this has gone on through a variety of cultures. We then see a young man walking into a church holding a broken guitar neck. His father is preaching and tells him to accept the word of God. It is a harrowing scene and Sammie(Miles Caton) easily sells how broken and desperate he is.

We flashback to a day before and we see that our primary focus is going to be three men, a pair of twin brothers who are veterans and gangsters by the name of Smoke and Stack(played by Michael B. Jordan). They’re returning to their hometown to open up a juke joint for the local population based out of an abandoned saw mill owned by a racist white man. They know that Sammie is a whiz on a guitar and recruit him first. From there, we see the two brothers’ reputation both personal and professional. A pair of young men try to rob their truck. Smoke shoots both of them non-lethally to make sure that people know what happens when you try and rob the brothers. They hire a pianist named Delta Slim(Delroy Lindo) and Sammie becomes infatuated with a singer named Pearline(Jayme Lawson) who he invites to the juke joint’s opening night.

The personal is that Stack had abandoned a young woman named Mary(played by Hailee Steinfeld) who passes for white. This leads to a lot of possibly dangerous scenarios when she oversteps the boundaries of normal race relations. She is none too happy with him. Smoke on the other hand, visits his estranged wife. They have a confrontation over his departure and how they both still love each other. Annie(Wunmi Mosaku) is a practitioner of Hoodoo and herbalism. She’s signed on as a cook for the juke joint. The lesser lights are Bo and Grace Chow(Yao and Li Jun Li respectively) who are suppliers for the joint and run the gambling tables and Cornbread(Omar Miller) to act as a bouncer.

From there, the movie kicks it into high gear. We see our villain, Remmick(Jack O’Connell) arrive at the house of a pair of KKK members being pursued by some Choctaw vampire hunters. He turns the couple after they rid him of his pursuers.

Our board is set and if you know anything about history, you know that black people in the south aren’t safe. There is always violence or the threat of violence. We got that in the beginning of the day when Smoke and Stack bought the saw mill. The racist white man they bought the saw mill from was clearly awful. We’ll get back to him soon.

The party looks like it’s rocking. We got a career defining long take shot of Sammie’s performance as he summons the spirits of past, present and future. Music is life and it fills the saw mill with it.

However, vampires feed off and destroy life and that draws Remmick and his cohorts in. They begin to turn the crowd in drips and drabs and then a flood leading only a few patrons left to defend the bar. The movie at this point feels like we’re seeing a thunderstorm flowing in. When the lightning hits, it fucking hits. The battle is bloody and brutal. But you feel some kind of relaxation at finally getting into it. It’s almost a relief.

In the end, there are only about four survivors, Mary and Stack both turned into vampires and Smoke and Sammie. Smoke sends Sammie away because he learned from Remmick that the Klan is coming to kill all of them. We’re brought to the beginning of the movie and Sammie flees the church as much as he fled the vampires.

Smoke kills the entirety of the Klan easily but one of those assholes gets off a lucky shot and mortally wounds our hero. The audience cheered at this part of the movie and this is how I believe every movie should end.

I was light with the details because I want anyone to read this to go and make their own decisions about it. What you’re getting if you watch this film is a skilled hand in Coogler directing a cast that is bursting with talent. There are few movies I’ve ever seen where it feels like nothing was excessive. Where it felt so airtight and effortless. Go see this as soon as you can.