‘Sinners’ Is Supernaturally Good

Sinners is the damndest mix of genres this side of Pulp Fiction. A bravura synthesis of unlikely bedfellows—a Jim Crow drama, a Chicago gangland thriller, a spooky vampire flick, an interracial love story, a time-tripping musical, a racial-identity epic, with hints of an evil-twin subplot—Ryan Coogler’s cinematic flip fantasia blasts clichés sideways in a gobsmacked brew of hellzapoppin’ invention. This is a studio movie? Sink your teeth into that, indie snobs!

SINNERS ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Directed by: Ryan Coogler
Written by: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Buddy Guy, Delroy Lindo, Yao, Li Jun Li, Lola Kirke
Running time: 95 mins

Michael B. Jordan pulls double-duty as monozygotic brothers Smoke and Stack, World War One vets who, in October 1932, eventually return to the cotton fields of Clarksdale, Mississippi after a violent—and lucrative—stint in Chicago robbing trains and banks for Al Capone. Now that they’re down in the Delta again, the duo drop a bag of dirty money to buy an outskirts-of-town sawmill from a secret Klansman named Hogwood (David Maldonado) and turn it into a bonafide juke joint. 

Coogler helps audiences avoid any Freaky-Friday confusion by dressing Smoke in a blue shirt and newsboy cap, while Stack wears a red tie and fedora. And before you can field-holler the words to “Smokestack Lightning,” the pair get their juke joint up in a flash that same evening, with 500 bottles of Irish beer and enough fried catfish to feed their friends and neighbors for a proper wang dang doodle. “Eat, drink, sweat until you stink,” Stack tells old buddy Bo Chow (Yao), the Chinese-immigrant grocer who gets him supplies and—thanks to his sign-painting wife Grace (Li Jun Li)—a proper marquee above the entrance.

They even enlist their little cousin, “Preacher Boy” Sammie (Miles Caton), the rebellious son of a disapproving music-purist reverend, to play the blues on a steel guitar that Stack says once belonged to Charley Patton. And they get sassy old coot Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to join the band, too, along with comely local chanteuse Pearline (Jayme Lawson). 

The trigger-happy twins are quick to shoot down trouble while they spread their bills around town and reconnect with past flames. Stack bumps into his smoldering passes-for-white ex Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), still bitter that he left town after confessing his love. And after a love-shack quickie, Smoke wants his witchy woman Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to cook for them—just as long as he’s still wearing the talismanic mojo-bag necklace she gave him for gris-gris protection.

Trouble arrives in the form of mysteriously charred Irish immigrant Remmick (Josh O’Connor), rejuvenated after enlisting unholy help from two racist strangers (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) so they can pay a nocturnal visit to the juke joint and offer their bluegrass fiddling. The twins tell them to go to a local white barrel place instead, but the trio want to execute their darker intentions before the night is over. Good thing Annie brought some pickled-garlic juice…

Sinners feels like someone took Mudbound and remade it as From Dusk to Dawn, with a dash of True Blood and a pinch of House Party. But that doesn’t even scratch the surface of its jugular-ripping sensibility. Get ready for Choctaw vampire hunters, drooling bloodsuckers, and a gleefully surreal Steadicam sequence that references LL Cool J, Parliament Funkadelic, vinyl-spinning DJs, Misty Copeland, African tribal dancers, Peking Opera performers, twerkers, and a roof that is literally on fire. Let the motherfucker burn!

Coogler’s movie-making sensibility—from his anguished debut Fruitvale Station to his racially-flipped generational Rocky sequel Creed to his blockbuster Black Panther films—is creating a body of mainstream work that explores the American black experience with a thrilling, boundary-pushing clarity. He even nods to the pop-culture Marvel trope of end-credit scenes with a wild coda that features Buddy Guy in a brilliant cameo that enriches and deepens the film’s themes of displacement, resistance, fellowship, and endurance. There’s nothing sinful about that.