In ‘Sinners,’ a gospel of Black liberation

Sinners

Directed by Ryan Coogler (Warner Bros., 2025)

The great theologian James Cone observed that “blues singers lifted African Americans above their troubles by offering them an opportunity to experience ‘love and loss’ as a liberating catharsis.” I don’t know if Sinners director Ryan Coogler has ever read Cone’s work, but I think that their visions of salvation and Black liberation harmonize. Even if they may disagree about the work of the Black church, they hold a common vision about the sacramentality of Black music written for Black people and performed in Black spaces.

Set in Clarksdale, Mississippi—the mythic home of the blues—the story is a fusion of historical drama with a vampire movie. It revolves around the opening of a Jim Crow-era juke joint funded by twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who are hustlers and veterans of both World War I and Al Capone’s dealings in Chicago. They hire their cousin Sammy (Miles Caton), the son of a local preacher, to be part of the musical lineup. But danger lurks in the form of the Klan by day and the undead by night.

At the heart of Sinners is a vivid and moving musical set piece. While Sammy is performing, the power of his soulful blues brings together the past, present, and future. West African dancers exist next to funk guitarists who exist next to early MCs and b-boys, all summoned by the music and dancing of the people gathered in freedom and enjoyment. This heaven-on-Earth catches the attention of the undead—a growing rainbow coalition of lost souls who want to be invited into the gathering.

This is a film that fuses several genres and almost doesn’t hold together. It bursts at the seams, and there are multiple alternate endings shown in the post-credit sequence. The thread that holds it together is music in general, the emancipatory spaces created by American Black music, and the power of the blues specifically.

Sinners is now available to stream on HBO Max.