Damn, Sinners is a gorgeous movie. That scene is a moment of cinematic genius. They’ll be writing about that one for a hundred years. Truly original. Truly stunning. 

I don’t think I noticed it the first time around, and I’m not sure Coogler would thank me for it because on all accounts John Ford was a total arsehole, but the first hour of the film really reminds me of The Searchers. Both directors use glorious widescreen landscapes to examine the violence and darkness underneath the American myth.

But with that there are clear differences. This is a reclamation. Ford made his hero a racist, exposing the ugliness beneath the Western myth.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Coogler takes that visual language further, completely re-centring whose story gets told.

Where The Searchers explores white guilt, Sinners is about Black resistance and survival.

There are more obvious and recent influences like the Coen Brothers’ movies about the South and definitely Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk till Dawn, but I don’t think the conversation with The Searchers can be ignored.