Favorite for the 2025 Oscar for Best Film, Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece is on HBO Max

Two brothers return to their hometown with a simple and risky plan: transform dirty money into a juke joint that guarantees income and a new life for the community. It soon becomes clear that the past does not accept agreement and that local forces, human and supernatural, test every step. “Sinners”, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, stars Michael B. Jordan in two roles, as the twins Smoke and Stack, as well as Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Miles Caton and Delroy Lindo. The action takes place in the Mississippi Delta, in 1932, when opening a black party space means defying customs, police and armed neighbors. The central conflict boils down to a fight for permanence: keeping the bar standing, protecting its own and preventing a newly arrived evil from taking over the street.

The objectives appear early and directly. With money taken from crime in Chicago, Smoke and Stack buy Hogwood’s sawmill to build a juke joint. The immediate goal is to open, attract public and pay off debts before the former bosses discover the embezzlement. There is also a political component: the bar shifts income and sociability away from the white people who dictate the city’s rules. This decision creates allies and enemies. Cousin Sammie, guitarist, accepts the project despite the disapproval of his father, Pastor Jedidiah, who condemns the blues. This clash between stage and pulpit defines parallel pressures on the family and the business, and each choice responds to these two vectors.

The first big turning point happens when the opening night stops being just an inauguration and becomes a collective ritual. Sammie’s presentation changes the focus of the scenes, the audience goes into a trance and the bar gains value that exceeds the box office. The practical effect is twofold: the desire to maintain space increases, and the risk also increases. Outside, Remmick, an Irish vampire in transit, watches and calculates. He offers money and protection in exchange for input and influence. The proposal seems to solve the cash flow, but it contains a threat, because in the film’s universe the literal invitation decides who controls the doors. Refusing maintains the integrity of the place, but shortens the period until the next attack.

Mary, Stack’s ex-girlfriend, becomes a key player when she chooses to negotiate with Remmick. Her decision unlocks the infection that will reach Stack itself and diverts the business goal to a containment mission. From that point on, saving the brother and keeping the juke joint active become simultaneous tasks. The montage speeds up time with ellipses between the room and the street, multiplying events outside the frame that reappear as new wounds on the bar door. Each bite reduces the room for maneuver, and the objective narrows: defend the perimeter, protect allies and prevent the threat from crossing the only barrier that still works, that of invitation.

Coogler explains the rules of the game so that each act has a verifiable consequence. Vampires do not enter without invitation, they react to silver and light, and the body can be contained by artisanal means. Annie, Smoke’s wife, enunciates this information in the midst of chaos, converting belief into protocol. The focus shifts from panic to strategy: who holds the door, who prepares resistance, who searches for supplies. In parallel, a second clock begins to tick when Hogwood and the Ku Klux Klan plan an attack at dawn. A siege is installed on two fronts. The bar becomes a fortress, time is measured in hours, and each change of plane indicates a new loss of territory or a gain of a few meters.

Faced with Remmick’s threat to her daughter Lisa, Grace invites the vampires in, and the line of defense falls. Breaking this rule produces casualties that alter the group’s mood and objective, and trust among survivors is shaken. Mary hesitates in the face of what she provoked, and this hesitation redraws alliances. The dramatic progression starts to be guided by losses and replacements: a function that disappears needs to be occupied, one less body requires a shorter plan, an open entrance demands new containment. The bar is still the center of gravity, but in each scene it costs more for those who decide to stay.

The decisive moment unfolds along two axes. On the one hand, Smoke needs to choose how much to pay to neutralize the command of the horde, knowing that his brother, transformed, is no longer just family but has become an immediate and mobile threat. On the other hand, Sammie and Pearline face the antagonist head on and use music as a weapon, not as an ornament, in a duel in which the instrument becomes a tool for survival and affirmation. The consequences are physical and moral. The staging narrows the space, brings breathing and broken wood closer together, and makes every meter advanced seem to cost a name on the list of allies. The outcome remains preserved, but the price of each choice appears entirely at the edge of the table.

The characters act according to what the film tells them. Smoke calculates, takes leadership and absorbs grudges that the city already harbored. Stack reacts on impulse, opens loopholes and accelerates deadlines. Sammie wants to touch, be heard, and exist beyond kinship, a desire that brings him closer to bright promises until he understands the embedded cost. Annie turns superstition into instruction that keeps people alive. Mary, a woman who passes for white, negotiates with danger to survive in a place that wants her hidden, and her contradictions generate direct effects on the board. None of this appears as isolated speech; each trait proves itself in action and counterattack.

Staging decisions change point of view and time. At the bar’s opening, Sammie’s performance does not serve as an illustrative number; it draws presences, expands the audience beyond the living and attracts the attention of the predator. The practical effect follows: Remmick tries to co-opt talent and offers currency that solves problems and creates a bigger one. Ludwig Göransson’s music works like a metronome of risk, accelerating when the juke joint needs to become a trench and lengthening notes to stretch the wait until dawn. These features don’t embellish; they change perception, define internal rhythm and reorder priorities.

The plot chain is direct. Presentation: return, purchase of the sawmill, juke joint plan. Development: team assembly, first night, rules of the supernatural, siege. Increased tension: Remmick’s proposal, contagion, invitation that breaks the barrier, casualties that change the plan. Resolution: focused on the dawn and choices that balance blood, family and community, no revelation here. Unlike “Creed: Born to Fight” and “Black Panther”, which move towards duels with previous rules, “Pecadores” transfers the arena to a community space and conditions any victory on the idea of ​​belonging. It’s not just about defeating the monster; it’s about deciding who has the right to sing, sell, dance and live on that street.

Dialogues inform and define actions. When Jedidiah condemns the blues, he defines the gap between pulpit and stage that pressures subsequent choices. When Annie lists vampires’ weaknesses, she turns fear into an actionable plan. When Remmick promises immortality and relief from racism, he exposes the temptation that captures the undecided. These lines change objectives, deadlines and focus of the immediately following scenes.

Throughout the decisions, the film follows people who need to choose what to save first. At each turnaround, Coogler removes facilities, measures losses and assigns the juke joint an ethical and practical function. Without anticipating the resolution, tension remains over who can make it out in one piece when the sun touches the ground in the Delta. The cost, for each choice, is paid in kind.