Stream It Or Skip It?
No passive-aggression, no BS, no mincing of words: Sing Sing (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is getting screwed. It’s a hands-down great film that few people have seen thanks to an unusual, possibly botched, release and marketing strategy that put it in not nearly enough theaters, and left potential audiences unable to see it for months before debuting on on-demand platforms. And so it didn’t get the Oscar attention it deserves – star Colman Domingo is up for Best Actor and Clint Bentley and director Greg Kwedar nabbed an adapted-screenplay nod, but its exclusion from the best picture and best supporting actor, for Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, categories feels… unjust. The metafictional film is a story about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at New York’s Sing Sing prison, casting several real-life actors from the program to play themselves, and the result is one of the most winningly earnest – and hopeful – dramas in recent memory.
SING SING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The RTA men have wrapped and put a bow on their latest stage play, and now, on to the next one. But once the glitzy costumes are off, they’re back in prison greens and marching obediently back to their cells in Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. A while later, a handful of core RTA members powwow in a circle in a nondescript room, parsing names of guys who’ve signed up for the program and would be the best fit. Divine G (Domingo) – real name John Whitfield, but nobody calls him that – and Mike Mike (Sean San Jose) seem to be the de facto leaders of the group, and we glean from the way they speak and carry themselves that they’re veterans of several RTA productions. These two are tight. They live in adjacent cells, and they often talk to each other through the cement-block walls, their voices muted but their mutual affection ringing clear.
At the top of their list of potential recruits is Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (Maclin), who we meet as he patrols the yard, hustling a young newbie for 500 bucks. Intimidating and threatening a kid is a performance, no doubt. Divine G and Mike Mike see it and approach Divine Eye and praise him for his showmanship: “Y’all thought that was acting?”, Divine Eye chirps back. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Divine Eye joins the rest of the players during their brainstorming session, led by Brent (Paul Raci), who’ll direct the next play, whatever it’ll be. No Shakespeare this time – they just did A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What does Divine G have cooking on his typewriter? A heavier drama that’ll fit his own thespian abilities, which might fit the bill. But Divine Eye objects. He suggests a comedy, since prison is heavy and dramatic enough, and some escapism might go over well with the audience. Everyone agrees and Divine G shakes his head and laughs as they spitball an insane saga featuring gladiators and pirates and cowboys and Egyptian mummies and Freddy Krueger and Brent actually writes the damn thing.
Oh, and Hamlet. He’ll be in it too. Divine G thinks he’s a shoo-in for the role until Divine Eye auditions for it. The guy who stumped for a comedy jumps on the most serious part? OK, fine. Divine G grabs a gladiator toga and gets to rehearsing. He also gets to trying to figure out Divine Eye. Divine G pulls Divine Eye aside for a chat and it gets a little prickly and tense. He offers to help Divine Eye rehearse for something else, too – his parole hearing. Divine G knows them all too well. They take a lot of preparation. He has his own clemency hearing on the docket, another shot at convincing whoever will listen that he’s been in here for god knows how long, for an offense he insists he didn’t commit. Divine G may be the most experienced and confident artist in the group, but he needs this emotional creative outlet as much as anyone.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sing Sing is like The Shawshank Redemption crossed with another exceptional 2024 drama about the healing power of theater, Ghostlight. And here’s a reminder that if you have yet to see Netflix documentary Daughters – about incarcerated men participating in a prison-sponsored daddy-daughter dance – you need to get on that.
Performance Worth Watching: No one should be surprised to see Domingo go deep to find the ache and bring us to tears here. He’s as hypnotizing as ever. But Maclin is a revelation, playing characters within characters, as his quasi-fictional Divine Eye subtly and quietly searches for his true identity through performance, knocking down the big, thick walls he’s erected around himself.
Memorable Dialogue: A member of Divine G’s clemency hearing blindsides him after he explains all the benefits of his work with the RTA: “So are you acting at all during this interview?”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Superior dramas inevitably find a way to present micro- and macro-conflicts through thoughtful writing that emphasizes depth of character and inspired performances like Domingo and Maclin give in Sing Sing. Such films work exposition into granular detail and give us a sense of what’s truly happening without stating it outright. And so Sing Sing is absolutely not a putting-on-a-show narrative building tension to the big third-act drawing of the curtain, but rather, a ruminative exploration of three exquisitely layered conflicts: The ideologically suspect foundation of a punitive American prison system, the existential weight on men incarcerated justly or unjustly, and the inner identity crises of Divine G and Divine Eye.
Which isn’t to say the film is preachy, and loudly stumping for cause – far from it. The casting of real-life actors from the RTA — all of whom notably come off as naturals on screen — asserts the power of rehabilitative programs, which take root like a flower sprouting from a crack in the pavement. As he wrangles and inspires his players to let go and render themselves vulnerable through performance, Raci’s character frequently returns to the film’s core irony: “Trust the process” is his mantra. That works within the context of stage drama, but what about the process of the justice system? It sure seems to have failed Divine G, who nevertheless holds onto hope and works hard to stage the play, the film taking his point-of-view as he understands that the journey to opening night is more important than the play itself. It’s also about the friends he makes along the way, which feels like a pukeworthy needlepoint throw-pillow aphorism until our hearts feel full to bursting as we watch Divine G find live-saving comradeship in Mike Mike and Divine Eye.
Kwedar shot Sing Sing on endearingly grainy 16mm film, using the natural light he was surprised to find permeating the decommissioned facilities he used as locations. The organic visual aesthetic generates warmth for a story set in a place that maintains its spiritual chilliness even when Divine G sweats through long nights in his bunk, unable to sleep from the heat. The film’s bittersweetness is unavoidable, building upon prison-movie classics like Shawshank to create a refreshing and enlightened drama that tackles hardship and hope in equal measure. As Divine G says plaintively during a key moment, “Sometimes it’s all just a little too much on the heart.” But we get through it.
Our Call: Must-see. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
