Even Sinners Get the Blues
At a descriptive level, Sinners would seem to be a movie dominated by reds: the ample blood that gets spilled, the rush of lust, the rage of racism, and the heat of a Mississippi fall. In truth, Sinners is all about the Blues. The Blues is there in the first shot, an ominous opening as Sammie (Miles Caton) clutches a broken guitar neck in a death grip. It’s in the premise—brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown to open a juke joint. And it’s there in the oner midway through the film, which links the Blues backwards to African rhythms, forwards to Afrofuturist funk, and sideways to traditional Chinese dance. The word bravura gets thrown around a lot, particularly with respects to long, single takes, but Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed, Fruitvale Station) choreographs a scene that’s innovative, inspired, and stunning—it will certainly be a shot and scene of the year candidate at the end of 2025.
While Jordan headlines Coogler’s latest movie, Caton is gradually revealed to be the focal point (alongside a strong supporting cast that includes Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, and Li Jun Li). It is the Great Depression, the SmokeStack twins have returned to Clarksdale, Mississippi after some sly dealings in Chicago, and they’ve spent their earnings on an old, out of use mill. A little work, some bottles of Irish beer, and a qualified cook is all they need to create their own club, a place of safety and celebration and revelry for the Black community. They quickly enlist their cousin Sammie, he of soulful tune and otherworldly talent on guitar, to play the opening night.
But Sammie’s music isn’t the only thing that will defy rational explanation this night. As the festivities truly get underway—and old tensions between friends and lost loves begin to boil—the juke joint is visited by a trio playing Irish folk melodies. Drawn to the music and led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell having a field day), they ask to be let in to join the party. The twins refuse, but the white musicians are insistent, if not quite threatening. They were right to be wary, as the party soon turns into a siege, with the attendees fighting for their life in dwindling numbers.
Coogler’s skills are evident throughout Sinners as he constantly avoids easy traps. Instead of color grading to give the now-overused aesthetic that informs us of the time period we’re in, Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw let the vibrancy of early fall burst within the frame. Instead of wielding the oppression of the Jim Crow South with a heavy hand, the film carves it into the backdrop of the story, knowing that its hooded presence looms. The older white man who sells the twins the mill claims that “the Klan don’t exist no more.” An easy lie; he knows it, the twins know it, and we know it. Even as the threat becomes less human, such earthly evil is understood as the real enemy.
Another great aspect of Sinners is that Coogler lets the Black community breathe—and sing. It’s far into the movie before any violence actually occurs, instead giving way to the music and the rhythms of life for the minority community of the town. Sinners is here to cherish these spaces, these people.
In this way and in its deep characterizations, Sinners has a lot to say about the Blues and Black music more broadly, about the importance of spaces for Black art to be celebrated, and about the fragile nature of such spaces when surrounded by pressures who want to exploit, coopt, or just destroy that art. If the Klan is one side of the coin, stampeding in racial violence everywhere they step, Remmick’s crew is the other side, ingratiating with overbearing charm while planning to suck them dry of their beauty.
All the while, Coogler manages to weave in the Black church alongside more mystic strains of religion, the dynamics of passing, the status of Chinese immigrants in the community, and other rich ideas. Sinners is at once a vital tapestry of Black communal life in the Jim Crow South, a reflection on evils and seductions which still haunt us today, and a downright thrilling hit.
