‘Sinners’ Review: Ryan Coogler’s Deep South From-Dusk-Till-Dawn Vampire Film Is a Lavishly Serious Popcorn Movie, With Michael B. Jordan in a Dual Role as Criminal Brothers
The story unfolds in 1932, spanning an extended day and night in the small rural town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. This region is inhabited by sharecroppers, blues musicians, bigoted white men, and simmering sexual tension. Michael B. Jordan portrays the Smokestack twins, Smoke and Stack, who were born and raised in Clarksdale but ventured to fight on the Western Front during World War I. They ended up in Chicago where they worked for Al Capone, refining their criminal skills. They have a history of hustling, pimping, and violence. Having returned to their hometown amidst the era of Jim Crow, one of them remarks, “Chicago isn’t anything but Mississippi with tall buildings.